Principles of western civilisation

IV WESTERN LIBERALISM 101

English phraseology, there is no doubt,” says Maine, “that the modern popular government of our day is of purely English origin.” It is in the movement which upheaved England in the seventeenth century, as Borgeaud points out, that we see being formulated for the first time in Western thought the political manifestoes of modern Democracy.”

Now, if we concentrate attention on the revolution in progress in England in the seventeenth century, we shall have to note certain facts of great interest respecting it. The characteristic doctrines of Democracy to which that revolution gave rise were undoubtedly, as Maine has pointed out,’ entirely different from any which had hitherto prevailed in the world. They were, moreover, it may be observed, inherent in the movement itself. They constituted its distinctive and essential teaching. They were not only clearly defined at an early stage of the movement, but they were set forth at that Stage in practically the identical form in which they have since been included in the programme of the modern progressive movement in nearly every country embraced in our civilisation.

If, for instance, we turn, in Mr. Gardiner’s Constututional Documents, to the Agreement of the People, dated 15th of January 1649,‘ and presented in the name of the army which had broken up the forces of the king in England, we find already outlined at this stage the actual political principles around which

\ Popular Government, by Sit Henry Sumner Maine, p. 8.

* The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England, by Charles Borgeaud, c. iv.

* Cf. Popular Government, pp. 8-60.

* Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, by S. R. Gardiner, No. 81, p. 359.