Principles of western civilisation

I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA 13

gress beneath the surface of events in the political life of the time, the impression made on the mind by the position in thought here described cannot fail to continue to be deepened. Any one who has mastered what may be described as the psychology of Western politics in the modern period, must have been impressed at some stage of his studyand probably all the more so if he has been able to detach himself from the local egoisms of nationality —with the world-wide influence which the system of ideas behind the political party representing the cause of progress in England has exercised on the development of our civilisation during that period. The political party in England which has been most closely identified with the cause of progress in the past has inherited what is beyond doubt, and judging it from many stand-points widely removed from each other, the greatest tradition in politics which our civilisation has produced. The movement with which that party is associated is directly related to almost all the principal results included in the modern drama of progress. From the period of the English revolution in the seventeenth centurythe events of which were held to have justified Pitt in the minds of his contemporaries, and even before the close of the century which followed, in describing the doctrine of the right of princes, otherwise than as derived from the people, as already “sunk into contempt and almost oblivion”’—-down to the modern period—in which the industrial and political 1 The words were used in the House of Commons in 1788, in the debate on the right of the Prince of Wales to the unrestricted regency. The following is the account given in the Buckingham Memoirs :—‘‘ Mr. Pitt asserted that

the right of providing a remedy for the suspension of the regular powers of Government rested solely with the people . . . The language, he held, upon