not of itself have made the English government as a whole popular in form. While it would have constituted a popular check on the King and the House of Lords, it would have been powerless to express the popular will in legislation.

The House of Commons was not, however, a popular body in the eighteenth century. In theory, of course, as a part of Parliament it represented the whole English people. But this was a mere political fiction, since by reason of the narrowly limited suffrage, a large part of the English people had no voice in parliamentary elections. Probably not one-fifth of the adult male population was entitled to vote for members of Parliament. As the right to vote was an incident of land ownership, the House of Commons was largely representative of the same interests that controlled the House of Lords.

That the House of Commons was not democratic in spirit is clearly seen in the character of parliamentary legislation. The laws enacted during this period were distinctly undemocratic. While the interests of the land-holding aristocracy were carefully guarded, the well-being of the laboring population received scant consideration. The poor laws, the enclosure acts and the corn laws, which had in view the prosperity of the landlord, and the laws against combination, which sought to advance the interests of the capitalist at the expense of the laborer, show the spirit of the

English government prior to the parliamentary reform of 1832. The landlord and capitalist classes controlled the government and, as Professor Rogers observes, their aim was to increase rents and profits by grinding the English workman down to the lowest pittance. "I contend,” he says, "that from 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy, concocted by the law and carried out by parties interested in its success, was entered into, to cheat the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty."

But it is not in statute law alone that this tendency is seen. English common law shows the same bias in favor of the classes which then controlled the state. There is no mistaking the influences which left their impress upon the development of English law at the hands of the courts. The effect of wealth and political privilege is seen here as well as in statutory enactment. Granting all that can justly be said in behalf of the wisdom and reasonableness of the common law, the fact nevertheless remains, that its development by the courts has been influenced by an evident disposition to favor the possessing as against the non-possessing classes. Both the common and the statute law of England reflected in the eighteenth century the political supremacy of the well-to-do minority.

1 Work and Wages, p. 398.

CHAPTER II

THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT OF THE

REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

The American colonists inherited the common law and the political institutions of the mother country. The British form of government, with its King, Lords and Commons and its checks upon the people, they accepted as a matter of course. In their political thinking they were not consciously more democratic than their kinsmen across the Atlantic. Many of them, it is true, had left England to escape what they regarded as tyranny and oppression. But to the form of the English government as such they had no objection. The evils which they experienced were attributed solely to the selfish spirit in which the government was administered.

The conditions, however, were more favorable for the development of a democratic spirit here than in the mother country. The immigrants to America represented the more active, enterprising and dissatisfied elements of the English people. Moreover, there was no hereditary aristocratic class in the colonies and less inequality in the distribution of wealth. This approach to industrial and social equality prepared the mind for

the ideas of political equality which needed only the stimulus of a favorable opportunity to ensure their speedy development.

This opportunity came with the outbreak of the American Revolution which at the outset was merely an organized and armed protest against what the colonies regarded as an arbitrary and unconstitutional exercise of the taxing power. As there was no widespread or general dissatisfaction with the form of the English government, there is scarcely room for doubt that if England had shown a more prudent and conciliatory spirit toward the colonies, the American Revolution would have been averted. No sooner, however, had the controversy with the mother country reached the acute revolutionary stage, than the forces which had been silently and unconsciously working toward democracy, found an opportunity for political expression. The spirit of resistance to what was regarded as unconstitutional taxation rapidly assumed the form of avowed opposition to the English Constitution itself. The people were ready for a larger measure of political democracy than the English Constitution of the eighteenth century permitted. To this new and popular view of government the Declaration of Independence gave expression. It contained an emphatic, formal and solemn disavowal of the political theory embodied in the English Constitution; affirmed that "all men are created equal;" that

governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed;" and declared the right of the people to alter or to abolish the form of the government "and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." This was a complete and sweeping repudiation of the English political system, which recognized the right of monarchy and aristocracy to thwart the will of the people.

To what extent the Declaration of Independence voiced the general sentiment of the colonies is largely a matter of conjecture. It is probable, however, that its specification of grievances and its vigorous arraignment of the colonial policy of the English government appealed to many who had little sympathy with its express and implied advocacy of democracy. It is doubtless true that many were carried along with the revolutionary movement who by temperament and education were strongly attached to English political traditions. It is safe to conclude that a large proportion of those who desired to see American independence established did not believe in thorough-going political democracy.

Besides those who desired independence without being in sympathy with the political views expressed in the Declaration of Independence, there were many others who were opposed to the