Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/302



MONG eminent English Radicals, Freeman the historian occupies a unique place. He goes forward by going backward. He is a Radical because he is a Conservative. He is a democrat because he is a student of antiquity. Addressing the Liverpool Institute in November last, he described himself as "belonging to that old-fashioned sect that dreads nothing so much as the change of novelty." It is his boast to be one of the trusty few who "cleave to the old faith that there is something in the wisdom of our forefathers, and that the right thing is to stand fast in the old paths." The Tories are dangerous innovators. Our political progress has consisted in setting aside "the leading subtleties which grew up from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth," and reverting "to the plain common sense of the eleventh or tenth, and of times far earlier." The most primitive institutions of the English race were based on universal suffrage. The Swiss Republic is the oldest polity in Europe, and the best. In all history there is hardly a more picturesque