Democracy anfc "IReUgton.

55

altogether. In the life of the state all confessionsof faith and all philosophical convictions aretreated on the same footing and enjoy the samecivic rights, so long as they do not—as, e.g., thepolygamy of the Mormons—come into conflictwith the state's general penal law. Entire freedomof conscience is only attained if the state maintainscomplete indifference to every religious or irreligiousopinion but guarantees to each complete freedomof operation.

From this central core a wide circle of " civicliberties " was derived. Of these there can beno doubt that the rights of free speech and of freepress, of free association and free assembly arereligious in their origin. They concerned primarilythe right of " prophesying " and of forming sects.Similarly the press censorship was of ecclesiasticalorigin. It is freedom of conscience, conceivedsimply as the absolute principle of liberty, whichinspires Milton in " Areopagitica," freedom " thenurse of all great spirits." It is through freedomthat the England of his vision is becoming a chosenpeople in a world of forced conscience andinquisitions, a people that shakes its locks endowedwith the strength of Samson, and like a youngeagle spreads its wings for a soaring flight.

Added to this motive was a deep-rootedmistrust of the State.

The Stuarts had after all to make themselvesindependent of Parliament by the sale of com-mercial and industrial privileges, and therebyforced their adversaries, the Puritans, to supportfreedom in trade and commerce. The Early