Equality and Antiquity

From The Servile State:

One can imagine some Roman of the first century praising the new imperial power, but through a muddleheaded tradition against "kings" swearing that he would never tolerate a "monarchy." Such a fellow would have been a very futile critic of public affairs under Trajan, but no more futile than a man who swears that nothing shall make him a "slave," though well prepared to accept laws that compel him to labor without his consent, under the force of public law, and upon terms dictated by others. (p.53) 

Also (in 1913) Belloc confronts the race problem with justice to the ancients,

There was no question in those ancient societies from which we spring of making subject races into slaves by the might of conquering races. All that is the guesswork of the universities. Not only is there no proof of it, rather all the existing proof is the other way. The Greek had a Greek slave, the Latin a Latin slave, the German a German slave, the Celt a Celtic slave. The theory that "superior races" invading a land either drove out the original inhabitants or reduced them to slavery, is one which has no argument either from our present knowledge of man's mind or from recorded evidence. Indeed, the most striking feature of that servile basis upon which paganism reposed was the human equality recognized between master and slave. [one thinks of Odysseus and Eumaios] This spiritual value was not, as a further pernicious piece of guesswork would dream, a "growth" or a "progress." The doctrine of human equality was inherent in the very stuff of antiquity, as it is still inherent in societies which have not lost tradition. (p.64-5)

As a bonus, here is Belloc's assessment of the "practical man":

It is not difficult to discern that the practical man in social reform is exactly the same animal as the practical man in every other department of human energy, and may be discovered suffering from the same twin disabilities which stamp the practical man wherever found: these twin disabilities are an inability to define his own first principles and an inability to follow the consequences proceeding from his own action. Both these disabilities proceed from one simple and deplorable form of impotence, the inability to think. (p.148)