ive in unity. After they asked for a king the
spiritual and the secular powers (as we should speak) were never at
peace, and never agreed. And the ten tribes who lapsed from their law,
melted away into the neighbouring nations. Jeroboam has been called the
'first Liberal;' and, religion apart, there is a meaning in the phrase.
He began to break up the binding polity which was what men wanted in
that age, though eager and inventive minds always dislike it. But the
Jews who adhered to their law became the Jews of the day, a nation of a
firm set if ever there was one.

It is connected with this fixity that jurists tell us that the title
'contract' is hardly to be discovered in the oldest law. In modern
days, in civilised days, men's choice determines nearly all they do.
But in early times that choice determined scarcely anything. The
guiding rule was the law of STATUS. Everybody was born to a place in
the community: in that place he had to stay: in that place he found
certain duties which he had to fulfil, and which were all he needed to
think of. The net of custom caught men in distinct spots, and kept each
where he stood.

What are called in European politics the principles of 1789, are
therefore inconsistent with the early world; they are fitted only to
the new world in which society has gone through its early task; when
the inherited organisation is already confirmed and fixed; when the
soft minds and strong passions of youthful nations are fixed and guided
by hard transmitted instincts. Till then not equality before the law is
necessary but inequality, for what is most wanted is an elevated elite
who know the law: not a good government seeking the happiness of its
subjects, but a dignified and overawing government getting its subjects
to obey: not a good law, but a comprehensive law binding all life to
one routine. Later are the ages of freedom; first are the ages of
servitude. In 1789, when the great men of the Constituent Assembly
looked on the long past, they hardly saw anything in it which could be
praised, or admired, or imitated: all seemed a blunder--a complex error
to be got rid of as soon as might be. But that error had made
themselves. On their very physical organisation the hereditary mark of
old times was fixed; their brains were hardened and their nerves were
steadied by the transmitted results of tedious usages. The ages of
monotony had their use, for they trained men for ages when they need
not be mon