Harold J. Laski

What was more significant was the realization of Montesquieu's import simultaneously with the effort of George III to revive crown influence.

Its analysis as a connected whole invigorated thought as nothing had done since the Civil Wars had elaborated the theory of parliamentary sovereignty.

The English constitution revealed to France an immense and unused reservoir of philosophic illustration.

The liberty of unlicensed printing--less admirable than they accounted it--the difference between a Habeas Corpus and a lettre de cachet, the regular succession of Parliaments, all these impressed them, who knew the meaning of their…

Naturally enough, there was a vast difference between the simplicity of a government where sovereignty was the monarch's will and one in which a complex distribution of powers was found to secure a general freedom.

The real meaning of their work to Englishmen lay in the perspective they gave to English institutions.

So far as a new current of thought can ever be referred to a single source, the French influence is the effective cause of change.

His genius, as his metaphysics show, lay essentially in his power of destruction; and the man who gave solipsism to philosophy was not likely to effect a new creation in politics.

He saw that history and psychology together provide the materials for a political philosophy.

His utilitarianism was the first efficient substitute for the labored metaphysics of the contract school; and even if he was not the first to see through its pretensions--that is perhaps the claim of Shaftesbury--he was the first to show…

He took the facts as phenomena to be explained rather than as illustrations of some favorite thesis to be maintained in part defiance of them.

He put an end also to the confusion which resulted from the effort of thinkers to erect standards of right and wrong independent of all positive law.

He first showed how difficult it is in politics to draw a distinction between ethical right and men's opinion of what ought to be.

But at least he saw that economics is rooted in the nature of men and therein he had the secret of its true understanding.

No one can doubt but such an equality is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less the happiness of the rich than it adds to that of the poor." It is clear that we have moved far from the narrow confines of the old political…

He insists that commerce demands a free government for its progress, pointing out, doubtless from his abundant French experience, that an absolute government gives to the commercial class an insufficient status of honor.

Before Bentham, who on this point converted Adam Smith, he knew that the rate of interest depends upon the supply of and demand for loans.

He insists upon the economic value of high wages, though he somewhat belittles the importance of wealth in the achievement of happiness.

He sees the value of a general level of economic equality, even while he is sceptical of its attainment.

The supposed antagonism between commerce and agriculture he disposes of in a half-dozen effective sentences.

The man who put indolence among the primary motives of human happiness was not likely to view novel theories with unruffled temper.

Political life, like human life, ends in death; and the problem is to make our egress as comfortable as we can, for the prime evil is disturbance.

He was convinced of the necessity of liberty to the progress of the arts and sciences; and no one, save Adam Smith, has more acutely insisted upon the evil effect on commerce of an absolute government.

He saw the inevitability of parties, as also their tendency to persist in terms of men instead of principles.

He realized that the House of Commons had become the pivot of the State; though he looked with dread upon the onset of popular government.