Commons. The conditions of change lay implicit in the Industrial
Revolution, when a new class of men attained control of the nation's
economic power. Only then was a realignment of political forces
essential. Only then, that is to say, had the time arrived for a new
theory of the State.

The political ideas of the eighteenth century are thus in some sort a
comment upon the system established by the Revolution; and that is, in
its turn, the product of the struggle between Parliament and Crown in
the preceding age. But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or
its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly
aristocratic. From no accusation were its statesmen more anxious to be
free than from that of a belief in democratic government. Whether Whigs
or Tories were in power, it was always the great families who ruled. For
them the Church, at least in its higher branches, existed; and the
difference between nobleman and commoner at Oxford is as striking as it
is hideous to this generation. For them also literature and the theatre
made their display; and if Dr. Johnson could heap an immortal contumely
upon the name of patron, we all know of the reverence he felt in the
presence of the king. Divine Right and non-resistance were dead, but
they had not died without a struggle. Freedom of the press and legal
equality may have been obtained; but it was not until the passage of
Fox's Libel Act that the first became secure, and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond
have recently illumined for us the inward meaning of the second. The
populace might, on occasion, be strong enough to force the elder Pitt
upon an unwilling king, or to shout for Wilkes and liberty against the
unconstitutional usurpation of the monarch-ridden House of Commons. Such
outbursts are yet the exception to the prevailing temper. The
deliberations of Parliament were still, at least technically, a secret;
and membership therein, save for one or two anomalies like Westminster