A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

call the Holy Alliance. And they proceeded to create police states in their own countries. Louis
XVIII, having been forced to flee on one occasion, was determined not to rock the boat and sat as
still as possible; but he died only three years after Napoleon, and his brother, Charles X, did his
best to suppress all traces of the Revolution. When the republicans resisted, he dismissed his
Chamber of Deputies by royal decree and took away the freedom of the press. The result was that
he had a minor revolution on his hands. The streets of Paris were barricaded for three days. Finally,
Charles lost his nerve and fled to England. It was the clearest possible warning of what would
happen if the aristocracy tried to turn back the tide of history. But the Holy Alliance continued as
before; it would be another eighteen years before the revolutions of 1848 would teach them the
same sharp lesson.
What we are now discussing is, of course, the greatest ideological conflict of modern times, and the
third great ideological conflict in the history of mankind. The first was the clash between
Christianity and Paganism, which ended with the victory of Christianity. The second was the clash
between the Catholic Church and the various protestant movements - beginning with the Cathars -
which ended in a draw between the two sides. The third is the clash between socialism and oldfashioned
individualism. This continues to rage as bitterly as ever in the closing years of the
twentieth century, with no sign of victory for either side. But historical perspective enables us to
make one basic observation. Christianity began as an individual protest movement against statesupported
paganism. Almost as soon as it achieved power, it abandoned its individualism and
became another state-supported religion that persecuted individualism. Protestantism challenged it
in the name of individualism, and its protest was successful. Protestantism has maintained its
individualistic flavour down to our own time; but it must be admitted that in most of the countries
in which it has taken root it has merely replaced Catholicism as the state-supported religion. And
even in the time of Calvin, it had become merely another form of dogmatic orthodoxy. The great
protest ideologies have a tendency to turn into their opposites. Socialism also began as a movement
of individual protest; but even in the time of Robespierre, it showed a tendency to change into a
murderous dogmatism that refused to tolerate individualism.
So it would be a mistake to follow the lead of writers such as H. G. Wells and Hendrik van Loon -
who both wrote histories of mankind - and condemn the men who created the Holy Alliance -
Metternich, Talleyrand and Alexander of Russia - as old fashioned reactionaries who failed to grasp
the lessons of history. All three were realists, who could see that this new ideology was based upon
muddled idealism. The world was not really made up of wicked tyrants and free-born men who
were kept in chains. The example of America proved that. After their revolution, the Americans
had quarrelled amongst themselves for a few years about whether the country should be run by the
upper classes - known as Federalists -or the people, who called themselves Democratic republicans.
Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, believed that America needed a strong government
supported by bankers. Thomas Jefferson believed in complete freedom of speech and a people’s
democracy. In 1801, the Democrats won, and America continued to nurture individualism and to
allow complete freedom of expression where politics was concerned. No one preached that the rich
were wicked, or that the wealth of the country ought to be distributed equally among every man,
woman and child. There was no need, since everyone had equal opportunities. So the Americans
went their cheerful, materialistic way and grew prosperous. Obviously, this conflict between
socialism and individualism was quite unnecessary.