766 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the civil authority is chiefly known to the individual citizen as 

 the protector of his rights, not as the director of his actions. This 

 is the case in Great Britain to a remarkable extent. Authority 

 there puts on no airs ; it has duties to perform, and demands re- 

 spect for itself in the performance of them ; but it does not pretend 

 to occupy a position of superiority over the people at large. What 

 it does it does in their interest and by their warrant, and the only 

 feeling, therefore, which a magistrate or other officer of the law 

 has in that country is that he is co-operating with others for the 

 general weal. In the courts lawyers may sometimes try to brow- 

 beat witnesses ; but lawyers are not invested with authority, and 

 the appeal of the witness in that case lies to the judge, who, as a 

 rule, will not allow that kind of thing to go too far. In Victor 

 Hugo's Miserables there is an interview between a young man of 

 good social position (Marius) and a subordinate police officer, 

 whose assistance the former has been obliged to invoke against a 

 band of criminals. The petty potentate questions the young man 

 very brusquely, and, finding him quite self-possessed and free from 

 fear, compliments him in the following terms : " You speak like a 

 brave and honest man. Courage does not fear crime, and honesty 

 does not dread authority." An Englishman would have felt like 

 knocking the fellow down for his impertinence and taking all 

 risks. The preposterous idea that a citizen seeking the assistance 

 of a functionary in a matter which the functionary is paid for at- 

 tending to, should stand in any dread of him ! But in countries 

 infected with the military spirit civil authority can hardly help 

 putting on the airs of absolute power. 



The history of England may, however, be appealed to in sup- 

 jjort of the principle that individual liberty waxes and wanes ac- 

 cording to the greater or less predominance of militarism. Wars 

 conducted abroad, though they have an important reactive effect 

 at home, do not affect domestic administration as wars carried on 

 within the nation itself. The Norman conquest secured for Eng- 

 land, if we except the struggles which occurred after the death 

 of Henry I, a long period of comparative internal peace, toward 

 the close of which parliamentary institutions began to take form 

 and substance. Then followed the Wars of the Roses, which led 

 to a decided increase in monarchical absolutism. But again peace 

 came to the help of liberty ; and, in the words of Bagehot which 

 Mr. Spencer quotes, "the slavish Parliament of Henry VIII grew 

 into the murmuring Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, the mutinous 

 Parliament of James I, and the rebellious Parliament of Charles I." 

 For over a century after the Commonwealth, liberty and social 

 order continued to gain ground ; but again came a period of reac- 

 tion brought on by the incessant wars waged by England between 

 1775 and 1815. So severely were the resources of the nation 



