Principles of western civilisation

102 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the progressive movement in the modern world has since, in the main, centred. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people ; of supreme power vested in a single representative assembly elected for a limited term; of equal voting power vested in all those who pay taxes; of religious freedom ; of the separation of Church and State ; and even that doctrine, subsequently adopted in the Constitution of the United States of America, of the limitation for the time being of the power of the representative assembly itself by certain fundamental principles embodied in the Constitution ;—are all clearly formulated in this document. These are doctrines representing, for the most part, principles different from any which had been enunciated in any previous period. They are the doctrines which have since controlled the course of political development in England and amongst the English-speaking people ; which have profoundly influenced the political history of modern Europe as a whole; and which we find included at the present day in the political constitutions of democracies like those of France, Switzerland, and the United States.

If we ask now what it was that led to the promulgation of principles destined thus to influence the development of the modern world—principles which, it may be observed, were widely different in significance from those which had _ hitherto prevailed in history—there can be no doubt as to the nature of the answer that must be given. They were, we see, in the last analysis, principles proceeding directly from the conceptions which had so profoundly influenced men’s minds in the great religious revolution which had just swept over the