Excerpt from The Province of Government: An Address Delivered Before the Liberty Property Defence League

MY lords and gentlemen, I have been requested to take the chair on this occasion, with the view of laying before you the Annual Report of the Liberty and Property Defence League, and with a View also, I hope, of advancing the objects of that League, and of considering how best those objects can be promoted by a short discussion here to-day. Looking at this matter in a general way I cannot help Observing that in the history of modern Europe, and in fact of the world, there has been an extraordinary change in the last 100 years in respect of freedom. The contest which has been carried on for more than that period, beginning, perhaps, in the American colonies and taking place in most countries of Europe, and even within the Shores of our own country, has been one for political freedom. It has been one for a greater share of the right of governing, for the extension of the privilege of taking a part in directing the afiairs of the nation, so that by degrees, in the course of time, a very large proportion of our countrymen here - a large proportion Of mankind in the civilised countries of Europe, have gradually acquired a Share in the directing power of the State. This has practically been a great revolution. It has been a revolution accompanied by violence in many cases, by great civil convulsions in others, while in some cases it has been a quiet revolution. But not the less has it been a revolu tion and the result has been that practically, we may say, that in most of those countries and in our own the majority rules. It isnot perhaps a mere numerical majority, but what with the in fluence of public opinion and with the extended franchise now possessed by the population of this country, here, at any rate, what is called a majority rules. Now, in former times, the rulers were in a small minority. Sometimes this was a minority of one, and sometimes a minority of comparatively few, as set against the great mass of the population over whom they ruled. The struggle then, on the part ofthose who were contending for political freedom, was more or less to limit the powers of those who ruled, and to control the exercise of their arbitrary will, and to endeavour to place a limit on the functions of the Government. But owing to the change which has now taken place to which I have adverted, the question assumes a totally different Shape, because it is no longer the power of one, or a few, over the many, which is sought to be limited, but it is the power of the many which, in many cases, in my humble judgment, is sought to be unduly exercised over the few, and which it is desirable to limit.

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