The atmosphere of the time, in fact, is deep-rooted in the conditions of
the past. Locke could not have written had not Hobbes and Filmer
defended in set terms the ideal of despotic government. He announced the
advent of the modern system of parliamentary government; and from his
time the debate has been rather of the conditions under which it is to
work, than of the foundations upon which it is based. Burke, for
example, wrote what constitutes the supreme analysis of the statesman's
art. Adam Smith discussed in what fashion the prosperity of peoples
could be best advanced. From Locke, that is to say, the subject of
discussion is rather _politik_ than _staatslehre_. The great debate
inaugurated by the Reformation ceased when Locke had outlined an
intelligible basis for parliamentary government. Hume, Bolingbroke,
Burke, are all of them concerned with the detail of political
arrangement in a fashion which presupposes the acceptance of a basis
previously known. Burke, indeed, toward the latter part of his life,
awoke to the realization that men were dissatisfied with the traditional
substance of the State. But he met the new desires with hate instead of
understanding, and the Napoleonic wars drove the current of democratic
opinion underground. Hall and Owen and Hodgskin inherited the thoughts
of Ogilvie and Spence and Paine; and if they did not give them
substance, at least they gave them form for a later time.

Nor is the reason for this preoccupation far to seek. The advance of
English politics in the preceding two centuries was mainly an advance of
structure; yet relative at least to continental fact, it appeared
liberal enough to hide the disharmonies of its inner content. The King
was still a mighty influence. The power of the aristocracy was hardly
broken until the Reform Bill of 1867. The Church continued to dominate
the political aspect of English religious life until, after 1832, new
elements alien from her ideals were introduced into the House of