82 Contemporary Evolution. 



fetters the opponents of their unchristian anti-theocracy, 

 the establishment and endowment of which they desire 

 to effect. Hence those justifications and laudations of 

 active persecution to which Professor Huxley and others* 

 have given utterance. 



Our empire, by a happy combination of circumstances, 

 and by the merits of the races which inhabit it, has long 

 been the conspicuous assertor of freedom. The sentiment 

 in favour of wide liberty to the individual citizen in 

 speech, in writing, in locomotion and association has not 

 only taken deep hold of our own people, but also of the 

 population of that magnificent transatlantic republic, the 

 greatest glory of which is the perfect freedom of its 

 citizens. 



By a series of happily devised measures perseveringly 

 perfected through more than a century, this civic liberty 

 has been defined and ever more efficiently guarded, the 

 tyrannical measures of Stuart as of Tudor being repu- 

 diated in principle no less than practically. 



It is to be hoped that the force of this traditional cur- 

 rent in favour of individual liberty in England is too 

 strong to be reversed or turned aside. Nevertheless there 

 is a certain danger that the " No Popery " prejudice may 



* E.g., " In the judgment of history the tyrannisms of free thought 

 may be justified." Westminster Review, October, 1873, p. 413. On 

 this subject see "Lessons from Nature" (Murray, 1876), chapter 

 xiii., p. 396. 



