of the great European state family presented a
curious spectacle. On every hand there was a cheerful trust in the
future. The present was as bad as possible, but belonged to the
passing and not to the coming hour. Truth was abroad, felt the
philosophers, and must prevail. Feudal privilege, oppression, vice and
venality in government, the misery of the poor--all would slowly fade
away. The human mind was never keener than in the eighteenth century;
reasonableness, hope, and thoroughness characterized its activity.
Natural science, metaphysics and historical studies made giant
strides, while political theories of a dazzling splendor never equaled
before nor since were rife on every side. Such was their power in a
buoyant society, awaiting the millennium, that they supplanted
entirely the results of observation and experience in the sphere of
government.

But neither lever nor fulcrum was strong enough as yet to stir the
inert mass of traditional forms. Monarchs still flattered themselves
with notions of paternal government and divine right; the nobility
still claimed and exercised baseless privileges which had descended
from an age when their ancestors held not merely these but the land on
which they rested; the burgesses still hugged, as something which had
come from above, their dearly bought charter rights, now revealed as
inborn liberties. They were thus hardened into a gross contentment
dangerous for themselves, and into an indifference which was a menace
to others. The great agricultural populations living in various
degrees of serfdom still groaned under the artificial oppressions of a
society which had passed away. Nominally the peasant might own certain
portions of the soil, but he could not enjoy unmolested the airs which
blew over it nor the streams which ran through it nor the wild things
which trespassed or dwelt on it, while on every side some exasperating
demand for the contribution of labor or goods or money confronted him.

In short, the civilized world was in one of those transitional epochs
when institutions persist, after the beliefs and conditions which
molded them have utterly disappeared. The inertia of such a
rock-ribbed shell is terrible, and while sometimes the erosive power
of agitation and discussion suffices to weaken and destroy it, more
often the volcanic fires of social convulsion are alone strong enough.
The first such shock came from within the English-speaking world
itself, but not in