Principles of western civilisation

366 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the crust of sluggishness and prejudice could be broken through; the lives willingly sacrificed, the careers ruined, the fortunes flung away, the imprisonment and dragooning, the ostracism and social persecution readily accepted, before a Liberal party in the modern sense could come into existence.” + No fact has left a more lasting mark on the English mind in its relation to politics than this deep-seated conviction that Western Liberalism as a political creed is, in the last resort, a creed, not of ease and of conscious political Utilitarianism, but of sacrifice ; the principles of which cannot be confined within any theories of interests in the State as such. In every serious crisis through which the advancing political movement has passed in England, the introspection of this conviction may be traced in its results, as by a broad pathway, through the literature of the transition period. The deeper we get into the causes behind the modern progressive movement, not only in England but equally in the United States, the more clearly do we see that it is in this circumstance that we have the real cause which differentiates at the present day the forward movement in progress among the advanced peoples from the same movement as we see it amongst the peoples of the countries in which the development described in the last chapter has not been accomplished. Amongst the latter we, as a rule, appear to see the forward movement under its various phases, whether moderate or extreme, attempting a task the successful accomplishment of which—if the view we have taken of the meaning of the evolutionary hypothesis, as applied to

1 « The Future of Liberalism,” Aacmillan’s Magazine, vol. 1xxii.