282 POLITICS 



It was, however, in regard to civil rather than political rights that 

 the code of nature was considered conclusive by all shades of liberals. 

 As to political rights, especially that of the suffrage, liberalism was 

 much divided. The more extreme spirits in its ranks were quite 

 sure that nature and reason immutably prescribed participation in 

 all the functions of government as the right of every man. Less 

 radical elements found in nature the right of representation, but not 

 of participation, in political functions; and many were loath to admit 

 that even participation in the designation of a representative was 

 within nature's gift to every man. Finally those liberals who shaded 

 imperceptibly into the ranks of conservatism itself, maintained 

 that while nature enjoined indisputably the guarantee of civil rights 

 to every man, the assignment and enjoyment of political authority 

 was a matter of human expediency, varying with times, places, 

 and circumstances, and not determinable a priori. Liberty for all, 

 authority for the qualified, was the maxim of this school. 



The list of names identified with these various shades of purpose 

 and belief - - the honor-roll of early nineteenth-century liberalism 

 includes many which have no meaning to the present generation, but 

 a few which still symbolize something distinctive in theory or in 

 practical achievement. France furnishes Benjamin Constant, Royer- 

 Collard, Guizot, Tocqueville, Lafayette, Comte, Louis Blanc; Ger- 

 many gives Fichte and Hegel (whose systems, conceived in the spirit 

 of liberty, had, however, the defect of extremely refined abstraction, 

 that they could be as readily adapted to the support of reaction as 

 of progress), Rotteck, Welcker, and the ultimately Americanized 

 Lieber; England offers Bentham and his radical followers, Grote, 

 the two Mills, and the redoubtable Brougham; Italy gives Mazzini, 

 and all Europe the group of devotees who worshiped the thought 

 and carried into operation the wild schemes of that amiable fanatic. 



The conservative opposition to the views and purposes represented 

 by the foregoing names was embodied for the most part in the royal 

 and aristocratic classes of the old regime. Its practical spirit was 

 expressed in that curious intermonarchic agreement known as the 

 Holy Alliance; in the forcible interference to suppress constitutional 

 government in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere; in the rigorous espion- 

 age and censorship over thought and expression throughout Europe ; 

 in the bitter resistance of the aristocracy in England to the diminu- 

 tion of their ancient prerogatives by Parliamentary reform; and in 

 the extreme assertions of aristocratic and monarchic privilege which 

 led to the explosions of 1830 and 1848. Philosophically, conserva- 

 tism expressed itself in three theories: First, that of the divine 

 right of the old monarchic and aristocratic order that political 

 authority emanated from God and could not be questioned by any 

 merely human agency; second, the theory that if nature were to 



