IDEA OF LAW IN POETEY 721 



posed. Our primitive ancestors, besides bequeathing to each of us 

 certain universal ideas of the duties of man to God, to the Family, 

 and to the State, handed down also certain common institutions 

 Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Popular Control representing various 

 interests and tendencies in society, by means of which it has been our 

 destiny to develop, according to our several circumstances, the course 

 of our national life. The history of France and Germany shows us 

 the spectacle of one or other of these principles growing to such 

 power that, like Aaron's serpent, it swallows up the rest. On the 

 other hand, though the dominant feature in the political history of 

 England is undoubtedly 



Freedom slowly broadening down 

 From precedent to precedent, 



the growing movement of liberty thus described does not, as Tenny- 

 son's verses seem to imply, arise from the inward expansion of a 

 single principle; it is the total result of the conflict between the 

 equally balanced forces of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy. 

 There is no trace in the history of England of the centralizing ten- 

 dency of things in France, absorbing all the functions and color of 

 local liberty into an omnivorous Absolutism. There is visible none of 

 the anarchical rivalry of Orders that prevailed in the Holy Roman 

 Empire, reducing the power of the Imperial throne to impotence and 

 inaction. At one time in our history the Monarchical principle was 

 predominant, at another the Aristocratic; forward movement and 

 fresh equilibrium were attained by the People throwing its welgnt 

 into one scale or the other, as circumstances required. Centuries of 

 conflict, sometimes ending in civil war, were needed to develop 

 the principle of hereditary liberty, contained in such documents as 

 Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights, into the complex fabric of the 

 British Empire. The leading feature in the character of the English 

 Constitution is its power of reconciling contrary impulses of action. 



As it lias been with us in the external sphere of politics, so it is in 

 the sphere of faith and imagination. From the very earlv days of 

 our religion we can see that a universal conflict has been proceeding 

 in the mind of Christendom, between the principle of authority, repre- 

 sented by Councils defining the dogmas of the Church, the principle of 

 individual liberty, represented -by the constant succession of heresies 

 and schisms, and the naturally opposed principles of Paganism and 

 Revealed Religion. But during the last six centuries the making of 

 organic thought in the great national communities of Europe has 

 been the result of the fusion, in different proportions, of certain antag- 

 onistic elements. -Catholicism, Feudalism. Humanism, and Reform, 

 and each nation has striven to settle the struggle proceeding in its 

 midst in the wav most consistent with its own character. 



