I. The Ancient City.
Many of you will think that I am beginning far away from the subject if I take the idea of citizenship first in its simplest form — as we see it in the ancient Greek world — in the little sovereign state with its central town and surrounding territory, the whole being equal in extent to a small county, and in population to an English city of the second rank. And to-day we will not scrutinise the numerous defects of these little commonwealths, but will try to gain inspiration from their positive ideas. And in order to grasp these ideas, and to apprehend the pure and simple nature of citizenship, we must forget a great part of what surrounds us to-day. We must forget our divisions and estrangements, our “interests,” as wet call them, the claims of birth and of wealth, the regimented and incorporated forces of labour and of capital, of industry and of commerce, of agriculture and of manufactures; we must forget the distinction of town and country, so deep that half the nation hardly knows how the other half lives; we must forget the vast and powerful organisations and traditions of the Church, the army, the civil service, and the law; and more than all, we must learn to forget the daily contrast of the executive and official staff which we vaguely call the Government, with the mass of unofficial persons who practically regard themselves as mere units among millions of their like, living indifferently under the protection of the law. In place of all this, let us call up a different picture. Let us think of an independent sovereign community of some 20,000 men, the whole free population amounting to 100,000 souls, more or less. There is free intercommunication between the town and the rural territory which immediately surrounds it ; the freeman, as a rule, has at least a small landed property, and is able to enjoy a fair proportion of leisure from manual toil. Industries indeed exist, giving brightness and variety to life, but heavy and monotonous labour is little in amount, and chiefly devolves upon slaves, who were to the Greeks what machinery, kept in its place, might be to us.
