This kind of plea for liberty is built, after all, upon the simple consideration that the world is likely to be the more happy if it refuses to build its institutions upon injustice. And institutions are necessarily unjust if the impression they continually produce in the majority is a feeling of envy and hatred for the results they impose. There is something wrong in a system which, like ours, maintains itself not by the respect and affection it evokes, but by the sanctions to which it can appeal. What is wrong in them is their erection upon the basis of passion and their insistence that reason shall serve what that passion is seeking to protect. So long as that is true of our society, we shall continue to deny the validity of all principles which attack the existing disposition of social forces. Those principles may often be wrong; yet sometimes, at least, they represent the certainties of the future. It is always a hazardous enterprise to suppress belief which claims to be rooted in the experience of men. For no outlook which has behind it the support of considerable numbers will ever silently acquiesce in its reduction to impotence. It will fight for its right to be heard whatever the price of the conflict. Here it has been urged that conflict of this kind is usually unnecessary and frequently disastrous. It has been claimed that truth can be established by reason alone; that departure from the way of reason as a method of securing conviction is an indication always of a desire to protect injustice. Where there is respect for reason, there, also, is respect for freedom. And only respect for freedom can give final beauty to men’s lives. FOOTNOTES [1] Acton, _History of Freedom_, p. 57. [2] As Mr. Aldous Huxley, for instance, does with a quite unnecessary apparatus of scholarship in his _Proper Studies_, pp. 1-31. [3] All this has been put in classic form by the late Professor Hobhouse in his _Metaphysical Theory of the State_ (1918). [4] Cf. Barker, _Political Thought from Herbert Spencer to Today_ (1915), p. 80. [5] W. H. Taft, _Our Supreme Magistrate and His Powers_ (1921), pp. 102-3. [6] See my detailed discussion of the point in 34 Michigan Law Review, p. 529. [7] 189 U.S. 253. [8] (1915) A. C. 120. [9] 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 122. [10] (1923) 2 K. B. 61. [11] Cf. my _Grammar of Politics_, pp. 541 f. [12] _Ibid._ [13] _Esprit des Lois_, Bk. XI, Chap. VI. [14] Second Treatise, Sec. 12. [15] Cf. my paper on American Federalism in the volume entitled _The Dangers of Obedience_ (1930). [16] Cf. Louis Post, _The Deportations Delirium_ (1921). [17] 250 U.S. 616. [18] See Taney’s _Report_. [19] I. W. Graham, _Conscription and Conscience_ (1922), Chap. III. [20] _Ibid._, p. 209. [21] _Ibid._ [22] See, for example, Wickwar’s _Freedom of the Press_ for an account of judicial _mores_ in the early nineteenth century; and H. T. Buckle’s pamphlet on the Pooley case for similar conduct thirty years later.