The effort to transform a dull and corrupt autocracy into a quasi-constitutional system came, like the efforts of Louis XVI at reform, too late to affect men who had already passed beyond any possibility of compromise with the idea of monarchical power.
Laski compares failed reform efforts of autocracies to historical attempts at change.
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More from Harold J. Laski
Each age finds that the incidence of freedom is significant at some special point, and there, once more, the lesson of freedom has to be learned.
Each age makes some idol in its own image and sacrifices upon its altar the freedom of those who refuse it worship.
We grant it in religion to deny it in politics; we grant it in politics, to deny it in economic matters.
The intolerance may be Catholic, when it insists that a unity of outlook is essential for the preservation of society; or it may be Protestant when, as with Calvin and the Socinians, it holds that the blasphemous nature of the belief…
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