Liberalism remained a middle-class outlook, admirable in its exposition of basic principle, but incapable of adjusting principle to a medium with which its supporters were largely unacquainted.
Laski describes Liberalism as a middle-class perspective that struggles to adapt to broader societal needs.
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More from Harold J. Laski
He showed that government by discussion can be made to illuminate great principles.
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 theory of a state of nature, with the rights therein implied, is the contribution, through Stoicism, of the Roman lawyers, and the great medieval contrast to Aristotle's experimentalism.
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