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There is a sense, and a most important sense, in which liberty is a positive force. It is its robust and bracing influence on character, which makes wise men prize freedom and strive for the enlargement of its province. As Mr. Mill expressed this:—'It is of importance not only what men do, but what manner of men they are that do it,' Milton pointed to the positive effect of liberty on character in the following passage:—'They are not skilful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. Though ye take from a covetous man his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that came not thither so. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue. And were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person, more than the restraint of ten vicious.'

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There is, I think, nothing in this paragraph really inconsistent with De Tocqueville's well-known and striking chapter, 'Comment les hommes de lettres devinrent les principaux hommes politiques du pays, et des effets qui en résultèrent.' (Ancien Régime, iii. i.) Thus Sénac de Meilhan writes in 1795;—'C'est quand la Révolution a été entamée qu'on a cherché dans Mably, dans Rousseau, des armes pour sustenter le système vers lequel entrainait l'effervescence de quelques esprits hardis. Mais ce ne sont point les auteurs que j'ai cités qui ont enflamme les têtes; M. Necker seul a produit cet effet, et déterminé l'explosion,' ... 'Les écrits de Voltaire ont certainement nui à la religion, et ébranlé la croyance dans un assez grand nombre; mais ils n'ont aucun rapport avec les affaires du gouvernement, et sont plus favorables que contraires à la monarchie....' Of Rousseau's Social Contract:—'Ce livre profond et abstrait était peu lu, et etendu de bien peu de gens.' Mably—'avait peu de vogue.' De Gouvernment, etc., en France, p. 129, etc.

NOTE TO [PAGE 242].

THE DOCTRINE OF LIBERTY.