Those active-minded enough to fight for their rights will, doubtless, be always in a minority; but they prick the indifferent multitude into thought and they thus act as the gadflies of liberty.
Laski describes the role of active citizens as essential in challenging the complacency of the majority.
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The State has power only for the protection of natural law.
The charge that he supported the Revolution in America and deserted it in France is without meaning; for in the one there is no word that can honorably be twisted to support the other.
Yet such defects must not blind us to the general rightness of their insight.
But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.
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