THE HISTORY OF MODERN LIBERTY.*
IN taking up the theme which occupied the day-dreams of Lord Acton, and inspired the bringing together of his unique historical library, Dr. Mackinnon has perhaps subjected himself to a somewhat unfair standard of comparison. If any sober historian now writes upon modern history as a general subject or upon liberty, he is immediately confronted with the tiers of tomes that Lord Acton did not write. The minor critio significantly draws dark conclusions from the fact that the • A History of Modern Liberty. By Juane Mackinnon, PhD. Leaden, Longmont and Co. [33s. net.] new (or old) historian has rushed in where the late Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge feared to tread. We must disclaim any such method of criticism. Dr. Mackinnon has produced a superlatively good book, marred only by an occasional looseness of style that detracts from the dignity of an important work. Doubtless he would have been glad to use the great Acton library, though had he done so we may doubt whether this further field of research would have materially modified the results here set down. We regret that in one respect Dr. Mackinnon has been compelled to follow the had example of the "Cambridge Modern History" in the exclusion of footnotes and the relegation of authorities to the ends of chapters. It is a false and foolish economy. Most men are by nature careless, and the general, instead of the particular, quotation of authorities encourages that original carelessness both in the student (who is precluded from checking his references) and the author (who often begins to think that evidence, after all, does not so very much matter). Rightly or wrongly, a shadow of suspicion hangs over a book that relegates its evidence to an appendix. We hope that Dr. Mackinnon in his subsequent volumes will be allowed footnotes.
The two volumes already issued carry us down to, and include, the age of the Reformation in Central and Western Europe, with full reference to that great movement as it thrilled through England and Scotland. "It may seem partial to devote an large a part of this volume to England and Scotland. My justification may be found in the fact that it was in England and Scotland in the seventeenth century that the great battle of constitutional liberty was fought out, and that the struggles of the Reformation age in these countries formed the preliminary of that great constitutional drama." This part of the work is well done, and is both illuminating and fair. Due stress is laid—and it is time it was laid—on the extraordinary brutalities of the Marian persecution. Dr. Mackinnon's comment on his careful account is instructive in the extreme
How, you ask, could men inhabiting a civilised country stoop to actions so brutal? Because some canting dotards had posses- sion of the conscience of a fanatically disposed sovereign, and presumed, in the true spirit of the mediaeval obscurantist, to distort Christianity with their hideous sophistries. There was moreover, in Mary, as in her father, a vein of vindictive cruelty!, which saw, in disobedience to her will, one of the blackest of crimes. The Marian persecution was the outcome of the Tudor imperiousness as well as of religious fanaticism, and to some extent the Protestants, who strenuously appealed to conscience against the edicts of queen, Parliament, and the Church, were the victims of their opposition to the will of the ruler as well as the
will of the pope They had, happily, refrained from damning their cause with wholesale atrocities, which made the Romanist creed seem the creed of savages, and they were erelong to reap the fruit of their forbearance and their heroic suffering in the recoil from this savage cult. The brutal
persecution of the Protestants defeated itself It is hardly possible to palliate these enormities by the plea of the spirit of the age. Persecution for religions opinions was the accepted dogma of the day. But it may be taken as certain that such inhuman persecution of Catholics by Protestants would have been impossible, and it may be assumed that Catholics in general would have been equally incapable of such enormities. In these matters it is usually the few fanatics in authority that give the :ead."
The elaborate treatment of the developments of liberty under the influence of the Reformation is preceded by a pre- liminary volume, in which the origins of modern liberty are sought out in the mysterious and still obscure recesses of the Middle Ages. The importance of this first volume is very great, since it treats of a period that has never been adequately dealt with from Dr. Mackinnon's point of view. We do not imagine for one moment that Dr. Mackinnon has produced anything in the nature of a final work in his investigation of the relationship of the Middle Ages and their social and philosophic conceptions to liberty as we now under- stand the term. The material for the social history of the Middle Ages is not yet available. We still see the Middle Ages darkly; we do not fully feel what is stirring in the homes and lives of the people. The clamour of the men-at-arms, the shouting of the schoolmen, the loud-voiced tyranny of King and Lord and Bishop, are all that we hear. We miss the music of the religious life of the people, the parochial activities, the sound of the innumerable folk-songs that ushered in the Reformation. Yet there was in the age preceding the Reformation a sense of liberty and true religion, of faith, hope, and courage, permeating Central and Western Europe. The gradual opening up of the German manuscript sources enabling the the historian to present a picture of social life in the Middle Ages that was perfectly unknown to the historian of ' twenty years ago, and is practically unknown to many historical writers to-day. It is in this direction that Dr. Mackinnon might have acquired help from Lord Acton's library, and still more from the sources indicated and used by Dr. Lindsay in his History of the Reformation, now in course of publication. Dr. Mackinnon has, however, given us an admirable account of political developments and of social movements, in so far as they affected those developments in the direction of liberty as he defines that term. He traces "the transformation of Western Europe under Romano- - Germanic auspices," he considers the relationship of feudalism and political liberty, and comes to the sound conclusion that, "judged by its effects on the generations that lived under it, _ and the irresistible reaction that it aroused, the feudal system was, to a large extent, neither historically nor morally bene- ficial." On the other hand, it must be remembered that the English Constitution developed from, and was (and is) largely- coloured by, that system. The House of Lords is a remnant. of feudalism, and nevertheless takes an important, though. largely negative, place in the legislative activity of to-day. Feudalism in England, however, was very definitely separated from its Continental counterpart, and played a very special part in the evolution of political liberty in this country that is not adequately discussed here.
The Italian chapters will be read with instruction and interest. Dr. Mackinnon regards Savonarola's career as "important as the expression of the Zeit-Geist, the active, impatient, inquisitive spirit of an age antagonistic to tradi- tional authority." We may, in fact, "place him among the heralds of a new age, though his place is not exactly beside Luther and Calvin." It would perhaps be truer to regard Savonarola as the force that cleansed the Renaissance from , its unmoral, and often enough immoral, attitude towards- Christian ideals. The slow stirring of revolutionary forces in France and Germany is traced with brilliant skiU. Dr. Mackinnon realises sufficiently that one and the same- force was stirring the peasantry throughout Western Europe, including England, to a blind revolt against existing conditions. Whether he gives sufficient weight to the part played by mysticism and religion in this revolt may be - doubted. The closer we are to the intimate life and customs of the peasantry, the more .13e realise that the moving forces in peasant life that made for liberty were religious forces, forces which rendered it possible for Wycliffe, Hus, and Luther in their respective generations to bring the lower orders to bear upon the problems of reformation. One is inclined to think, indeed, that it was an absence of family religious life - in France that delayed the Reformation, and therefore the Revolution, in that country to so late a date. The conditions of family life amongst the lowest orders in France during the Middle Ages are less well known than in Germany during the same period. But if we can judge of that life as depicted in Gerson's tremendous sermon delivered before the Court of ' Charles VI. on October 7th, 1405, it is perhaps safe to - believe that the peasantry had not the same deep hold of religion as obtained in Germany and England. Gerson's . own efforts to teach religion to the poor are also evidence of this. It is a pleasing theory to advance, and one which seems borne out by facts, that the progress of liberty hate been in the past measured by the purity and intensity of the- religious faith of the mass of the people. Dr. Mackinnon'a admirable and well-balanced work lends, indeed, great weight to this proposition. If the doctrine has ever been true, it in true still, and one that should be borne in mind by all who are- concerned in the education and social amelioration of the, peoples of Europe, and in the task of leading them towards the- social service which is perfect freedom.
Previous page
