elements with which I am not here concerned. But so much is plain.
The Jews were in the beginning the most unstable of nations; they
were submitted to their law, and they came out the most stable of
nations. Their polity was indeed defective 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