English Idea, which the Stamp Act Congress defended at New York exactly
five hundred years afterward. When we think of these dates, by the way,
we realize the import of the saying that in the sight of the Lord a
thousand years are but as a day, and we feel that the work of the Lord
cannot be done by the listless or the slothful. So much time and so much
strife by sea and land has it taken to secure beyond peradventure the
boon to mankind for which Earl Simon gave up his noble life on the field
of Evesham! Nor without unremitting watchfulness can we be sure that the
day of peril is yet past. From kings, indeed, we have no more to fear;
they have come to be as spooks and bogies of the nursery. But the
gravest dangers are those which present themselves in new forms, against
which people's minds have not yet been fortified with traditional
sentiments and phrases. The inherited predatory tendency of men to seize
upon the fruits of other people's labour is still very strong, and while
we have nothing more to fear from kings, we may yet have trouble enough
from commercial monopolies and favoured industries, marching to the
polls their hordes of bribed retainers. Well indeed has it been said
that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. God never meant that in
this fair but treacherous world in which He has placed us we should earn
our salvation without steadfast labour. [Eternal vigilance is the price
of liberty]

To return to Earl Simon, we see that it was just in that wonderful
thirteenth century, when the Roman idea of government might seem to
have been attaining its richest and most fruitful development, that the
richer and more fruitful English idea first became incarnate in the
political constitution of a great and rapidly growing nation. It was not
long before the struggle between the Roman Idea and the English Idea,
clothed in various forms, became the dominating issue in European
history. We have now to observe the rise of modern nationalities, as new