s, in fact, the complex history of the popular element in this ancient
polity, which was sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger, but which
has never died out, has commonly possessed great though varying power,
and is now entirely predominant. The history of this growth is the
history of the English people; and the discussions about this
constitution and the discussions within it, the controversies as to its
structure and the controversies as to its true effects, have mainly
trained the English political intellect, in so far as it is trained.
But in much of Europe, and in England particularly, the influence of
religion has been very different from what it was in antiquity. It has
been an influence of discussion. Since Luther's time there has been a
conviction more or less rooted, that a man may by an intellectual
process think out a religion for himself, and that, as the highest of
all duties, he ought to do so. The influence of the political
discussion, and the influence of the religious discussion, have been so
long and so firmly combined, and have so effectually enforced one
another, that the old notions of loyalty, and fealty, and authority, as
they existed in the Middle Ages, have now over the best minds almost no
effect.

It is true that the influence of discussion is not the only force which
has produced this vast effect. Both in ancient and in modern times
other forces cooperated with it. Trade, for example, is obviously a
force which has done much to bring men of different customs and
different beliefs into close contiguity, and has thus aided to change
the customs and the beliefs of them all. Colonisation is another such
influence: it settles men among aborigines of alien race and usages,
and it commonly compels the colonists not to be over-strict in the
choice of their own elements; they are obliged to coalesce with and
'adopt' useful bands and useful men, though their ancestral customs may
not be identical, nay, though they may be, in fact, opposite to their
own. In modern Europe, the existence of a cosmopolite Church, claiming
to be above nations, and really extending through nations, and the
scattered remains of Roman law and Roman civilisation co-operated with
the liberating influence of political discussion. And so did other
causes also. But perhaps in no case have these subsidiary causes alone
been able to generate intellectual freedom; certainly in all the most
remarkable cases the influence of discuss