FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS OF. POLITICS 281 



powers in reference to their policy of supervision over the affairs 

 Europe was frequently determined by the real or assumed bearing 

 of the policy on the great issue between liberalism and conservatism. 

 Metternich's astute suggestion that the Greeks, in their struggle 

 for independence, were liberals in insurrection against their legiti- 

 mate sovereign, the Sultan, illustrates the potency of the leading 

 idea of the time, as a force for diplomats to conjure with. The 

 policy of England toward Spain's American colonies during the 

 twenties, with the incidental though hardly anticipated result of 

 our own Monroe Doctrine, had for its foundation Canning's dislike 

 of ultra-conservatism, while the long and influential entente between 

 the English reformed government and the government of Louis 

 Philippe rested notoriously on the sympathy between the leaders 

 of political thought in the two countries, as opposed to the autocratic 

 and reactionary influence represented by the three Eastern powers. 



Assuming, then, that the struggle between liberalism and conserva- 

 tism was the characteristic mark of the practical politics of the period 

 extending to the middle of the century, let us consider what w r ere 

 the principles of political science that were involved in the struggle 

 and its result. 



Fundamentally, nineteenth-century liberalism meant democracy. 

 Its ultimate aim was to break down the bars which excluded from 

 political life the classes of people whose intellectual, social, and eco- 

 nomic significance was becoming unmistakably predominant. For 

 its immediate aim it demanded liberty and equality. The content 

 of these much-abused terms was explained in accordance with the 

 philosophy of the eighteenth century, that is, by the dogmas which 

 had been demonstrated by Montesquieu and Rousseau and had been 

 formulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Liberty was 

 held to consist in a series of rights defined by nature itself, and 

 equality in the possession of all these rights by every man by the 

 fact of his humanity. Within the sacred circle of these rights no 

 governmental power could intrude. Against every claim of author- 

 ity to do so as derived from God or custom or tradition was opposed 

 the decree of supreme and beneficent nature. The precise character 

 of nature this kindly source of human rights was no less 

 variously and indeterminately defined by nineteenth-century than 

 it had been by eighteenth-century philosophers; and the list of 

 rights that were deduced by laborious speculation from nature in 

 the abstract bore a suspiciously close resemblance to one which 

 could be compiled from the very concrete constitutional law of 

 England and the United States. Yet nature whatever the diver- 

 sity of ideas connoted by the term; and nature interpreted by 

 reason, regardless of the skeptic's query, Whose reason? continued 

 throughout the period we are discussing to be the ultimate basis of 

 the liberal creed. 



