Harold J. Laski: “Unfree for the simple reason that the rulers of the state will not regard his will as entitled to consideration in the…”

But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.

That some sort of toleration was inevitable few, save a group of prejudiced irreconcilables, would have denied.

How could it seek security where it defied the desires of the vast majority of its subjects?

The revolutionary spirit, in fact, was as much the product of the past as the very institutions it came to condemn.