The American Presbyterian and Theological Review Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1867 Excerpt: ... Art VI.--ANCIENT LIBERTY AND MODERN LIBERTY. Br Edouabd Laboulaye, Member of the Institute. Translated by Hon. Joseph llowlancl, Mitttcuwsui, N. T. To study politics, or the science of government, we must go back to the Greeks. They are our masters, whether we have derived our ideas from the original source, or received tliem through the Romans, who, in political philosophy as in every other doctrine, invented nothing. The East was the seat of vast empires, but these great monarchies were only political and religious despotisms. Except in China, it does not appear that anything was written under these governments. The reason for this is simple. On the one hand, it is difficult to collect general rules and to build tip a system in the case of a nation ruled by the caprice of a single master; and, on the other hand, it is not easy to form a just estimate of an absolute power. Despotism loves silence above all else; even eulogy disturbs it; light terrifies it; if discussed its fate is sealed. The case was entirely different in Greece. In that country, divided among so many different peoples and governments, the attention of philosophers was early directed towards society the State and its laws. A democracy as unstable in character as that of Athens, a city which was the theatre of a constant succession of revolutions, furnished a study which impressed itself forcibly upon all reflecting minds. Though the country was small, its experience was great. Athens soon exhausted all the forms of liberty. Its history set forth in glaring light the vices of a factious ambition; it was easy to recognize in the convulsions of the republic that natural law which draws order out of anarchy, and causes tyranny to follow the license of a people whopa the flattery of demagogues...