and from 1603
to 1760.

3. When did the Industrial Revolution begin? What were its causes?
What its results?

4. The rise of British commerce.

5. Effect of commerce on English economic and social life.

6. Of what use to England were her American colonies?

7. The effect of the American Revolution on the French Revolution.

8. The effect of the French Revolution on American liberty.

{413}

_PART V_

MODERN PROGRESS

CHAPTER XXVI

PROGRESS OF POLITICAL LIBERTY

_Political Liberty in the Eighteenth Century_.--Looking backward from
the standpoint of the close of the eighteenth century and following the
chain of events in the previous century, the real achievement in social
order is highly disappointing. The French Revolution, which had
levelled the monarchy, the church, and the nobility, and brought the
proletariat in power for a brief season and lifted the hopes of the
people toward a government of equality, was hurrying on from the
directorate to the consulate to the empire, and finally returning to
the old monarchy somewhat worn and dilapidated, indeed, but sufficient
in power to smother the hopes of the people for the time being.
Numerous French writers, advocating anarchy, communism, and socialism,
set up ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were not to be
realized as the immediate result of the revolution. Babeuf,
Saint-Simon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc set forth new ideals of government,
which were diametrically opposed to the practices of the French
government in preceding centuries. Though some of their ideals were
lofty, the writers were critical and destructive rather than
constructive.

England, after the coming of William and Mary and the passing of the
Bill of Rights in 1689, witnessed very little progress in political
rights and liberty until the reform measures of the nineteenth century.
On the continent, Prussia had risen to a tremendous power as a military
state and developed an autocratic government with some pretenses to
political liberty. But the dominant force of Prussia working on the
basis of the ancient feudalism was finally to crush out the liberties
of the German people and establish autocratic government. {414} The
Holy Roman Empire, which had continued so long under the union of
Austria and Italy, backed by the papacy, had reached its height of
arbitrary power, and was destroyed by the Napoleonic wars. In the
whole period there were political s