Whether this growth of power in the individual and in the state is a good or an evil thing depends on the conscience of those who wield it. The power of the over-mighty subject has generally been a tyranny; and all power is distrusted by old-fashioned Liberals and philosophic Anarchists, because they have a traditional suspicion that it will fall into hostile or unscrupulous hands. But the forces of evil cannot be overcome by _laissez faire_, and power is an indispensable weapon of progress. A powerless state means a helpless community; and anarchy is the worst of all forms of tyranny, because it is irresponsible, incorrigible, and capricious. Weakness, moreover, is the parent of panic, and panic brings cruelty in its train. So long as the state was weak, it was cruel; and the hideous treason-laws of Tudor times were due to fear. The weak cannot afford to be tolerant any more than the poor can afford to be generous. Cecil thought that the state could not afford to tolerate two forms of religion; to-day it tolerates hundreds, and it laughs at treason because it is strong. We are humanitarian, not because we are so much better than our ancestors, but because we can afford the luxury of dissent and conscientious objections so much better than they could. Political liberty and religious freedom depend upon the power of the state, inspired, controlled, and guided by the mind of the community. Last of all, through this power man has acquired faith, not in miraculous intervention, but in his capacity to work out his own destinies by means of the weapons placed in his hands and the dominion put under his feet. He no longer believes that the weakest must go to the wall, and the helpless be trampled under foot in the march of civilization; nature is no longer a mass of inscrutable, iron decrees, but a treasury of forces to be tamed and used in the redemption of mankind by man; and mankind is no longer a mob of blind victims to panic and passion, but a more or less orderly host marching on to more or less definite goals. The individual, however, can do little by himself; he needs the strength of union for his herculean tasks; and he has found that union in the state. It is not an engine of tyranny, but the lever of social morality; and the function of English government is not merely to embody the organized might and the executive brain of England, but also to enforce its collective and coordinating conscience. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE