a force which
would have crushed Charlemagne and his paladins and peers like so many
eggshells.[127] Scott, in the 'Fair Maid of Perth,' describes the
'Devil's Dick of Hellgarth' who followed the laird of Wamphray, who rode
with the lord of Johnstone, who was banded with the Earl of Douglas, and
earl, and lord, and laird, and the 'Devil's Dick' rode where they
pleased and took what they chose. Does that imply that Scotland was then
subject to force, and that now force has disappeared?

No; it means that the force that now stands behind a simple policeman
is to the force of Douglas and his followers as the force of a line of
battle ship to the force of an individual prize-fighter.[128] It works
quietly precisely because it is overwhelming. Force therefore underlies
and permeates every human institution. To speak of liberty taken
absolutely as good is to condemn all social bonds. The only real
question is in what cases liberty is good, and how far it is good.
Buckle's denunciation of the 'spirit of protection' is like praising the
centrifugal and reviling the centripetal force. One party would be
condemning the malignity of the force which was dragging us all into the
sun, and the other the malignity of the force which was driving us madly
into space. The seminal error of modern speculation is shown in this
tendency to speak as advocates of one of different forces, all of which
are necessary to the harmonious government of conduct.[129]

This insistence upon the absolute necessity of force or coercion, upon
the theory that, do what you will, you alter only the distribution, not
the general quantity of force, is the leading principle of the book.
Compulsion and persuasion go together, but the 'lion's share' of all the
results achieved by civilisation is due to compulsion. Parliamentary
government is a mild and disguised form of compulsion[130] and reforms
are carried ultimately by the belief that the reformers are the
strongest. Law in general is nothing but regulated force,[131] and even
liberty is from the very nature of things dependent upon power, upon the
protection, that is, of a powerful, well-organised intelligent
government.[132] Hobbes's state of war simply threw an unpopular truth
'into a shape likely to be misunderstood.' There must be war, or evils
worse than war. 'Struggles there must always be unless men stick like
limpets or spin like weathercocks.'[133]

Hence we have our problem: liberty is good, not a