Excerpt from History of Liberty, Vol. 1 of 2 The Old liberty was the liberty of rulers. As such it was remembered. As such it was the object of longings and strivings on the part of those by whom, or by whose ancestors, it had once been pos sessed. The loss which they felt most keenly was that of dominion. The gain of dominion was that for which they struggled most resolutely. They thought themselves struggling for liberty. They thought themselves lamenting for liberty. But it was because liberty and dominion had been one and the same throughout the ancient ages. Liberty had belonged to none but rulers. To recover or to preserve such a liberty as this, was not the want of mankind. The ruling classes of the West and of the East constituted but a small portion of the generations then existing. Not one man out of a thousand, out of a million, but was a subject in one or in another degree. The great need was of a liberty which should belong to these multitudinous Subjects as well as to their scattered rulers. The liberty of the ruler had failed. The liberty of the subject was the liberty now required. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.