Politics, as Seeley said, are vulgar unless they are liberalized by history; and a state which failed to see itself as a mosaic of ancestral institutions would build its novelties upon foundations of sand.
Laski emphasizes the importance of historical context in politics, arguing against a purely modern perspective.
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The case for the view that freedom of thought and speech is a good in itself is fairly easy to make.
But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.
Its eldest child is charity, and without it there can be no honesty of opinion.
The more equality there is in a State, the more use, in general, we can make of our freedom.
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