In England, or France, or Germany, there is no freedom where the fundamentals of the society are called into question, if their rulers think that this may cause danger to those questions. The government may decide that William Godwin is innocuous; but it will not hesitate to convict Tom Paine--in truth far less drastic--of high treason. The cause of this attitude is, I think, beyond discussion. If freedom seeks to alter fundamentals, freedom must go; and freedom can hardly help but concentrate on fundamentals in a society distinguished by economic inequality. I do not need to point out to you the extraordinary timidity of society before subversive discussion of property-rights, nor to insist upon the complicated legal precautions that are taken for its defence. You have only to examine the attitude in which Labour combinations are approached by those who possess economic power, as instanced, for example, by the use of the injunction by American judges,[45] to realize that the main purpose of limitations on freedom is to prevent undue encroachments upon the existing inequalities. We announce that we are open to conviction in matters of social arrangement. But we take the most careful steps to see that our convictions are not likely to be overthrown. For the chance that reason will prevail in an unequal society is necessarily small. It is always at a disadvantage compared with interest, for, to the latter, especially in property matters, passion is harnessed, and in the presence of passion people become blind to truth. They see what they want to see, and they select as truth that which serves the purpose they desire to see prevail. The preparation of news for the making of opinion is, indeed, extraordinarily like the old religious controversy in which men hurled text and counter-text at one another. The real problem was one of proportions; but the protagonists altered the proportions that the material might the better serve their cause. Some years ago, a Labour Delegation returned from Russia with a statement about its character from Peter Kropotkin. A leading capitalist newspaper in London printed all those parts of it which attacked the Russian régime; and the leading Labour newspaper printed those parts of it favourable to the Bolshevik experiment. The readers of the first were, therefore, satisfied with the knowledge that an eminent anarchist heartily disliked Bolshevism; and the readers of the second were heartened by discovering that so eminent a friend of freedom was nevertheless prepared to support a Dictatorship as favourable to freedom. You will remember that Luther and Calvin were always prepared to abide by the plain words of Scripture; but each was careful, at critical points, to insist that his own interpretation alone possessed validity. In that atmosphere, a solution which strikes opposing controversialists as just is not, at least easily, to be found.