for the Revolution of 1689. John Locke learned from history something that Hobbes refused to consider. He made a great plea for religious toleration and embodied it in the “Fundamental Constitution” of Carolina, which he drafted in 1669 on the invitation of the proprietors of the province, and his example was to be improved by William Penn in his form of government for Pennsylvania. It is to John Locke that we owe a reasonable theory of limited monarchy which was to become the creed of the Whig party. Locke’s view of the contract was much less extreme than that of Hobbes. In his thought every individual conveys to society as a whole his right of executing the law of nature; all other natural rights he retains. Locke, therefore, brings us back to the old idea that the powers of the State are limited to certain purposes. It is his discussion of the mode in which those powers are exercised which has the greatest interest at the present day. His theory of reserved natural rights leaves a large place for religious toleration, while the limitations he places upon the State are more in accordance with history than is the absolute leviathan which Hobbes conceived. Where Hobbes had considered law to be the command of the State, Locke returned to the notion of natural law—a conception which was easily reconciled with the mediaeval view of law as the will of God. Where Hobbes had made law the tool of the State, Locke regarded it as the guardian of liberty.
Locke declared that the legislature is the supreme power in the State, and from this he deduced certain maxims of constitutional practice which, in fact, were the historical settlement reached at the end of the seventeenth century. And so beginning from general philosophical and theoretical considerations, Locke proceeds to give a philosophical defence of such very practical measures as the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, parliamentary control over taxation, and the whole machinery of limited monarchy.
It seems that Locke was the first modern theorist to propound a doctrine of the separation of powers. He observed that legislation is (or in his day was) an intermittent function, while the executive, on the other hand, must never cease its activity. Consequently, the two are better assigned to different bodies, which, he observes, is almost universally the practice—and here we seem to see an example of that comparative study of institutions which had been prominent in England ever since the days of Fortescue, Sir Thomas Smith and others. In his discussion of the relations between the legislature and the executive, Locke very clearly is thinking of current politics although his treatment is confined to scrupulously general terms. How close this theory was to current practical politics can be seen where he urges the separation of legislature from executive; this object would have been achieved through the passage we have just quoted from the Act of Settlement excluding ministers from the House of Commons, which was passed only four years before the death of Locke.1 Locke’s suggestions on the separation of powers were obviously derived from his observation of contemporary English practice; indeed, the easy way in which he seems to take the situation for granted is an indication that he felt it too obvious to need very detailed theoretical treatment. It is only a century later that his work will be used as a basis for a rediscovery by the great philosopher Montesquieu of a general theoretical doctrine of the separation of powers such as Aristotle and Marsiglio had suggested in ancient and mediaeval times.
John Locke, therefore, may be regarded as expressing to a peculiar degree the compromise and settlement which the nation had reached when the expulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of William III had enabled political passions to die down. His summary of the results of the great conflict remained for many years the justification on philosophical grounds of the compromise which practical politics had reached, and with his work the tumultuous drama of the seventeenth century fittingly ends on a quiet and hopeful note.1
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
SUMMARY
AGRICULTURE
The eighteenth century is the great dividing line in English economic development between mediaeval and modern times. The central point in its history is usually referred to as the industrial revolution, which was rather, in point of fact, a long and slow process which began to accelerate towards the middle of the century. Its results were to change the face of England completely; its mode of life, its source of wealth, even its colonial possessions were all radically changed as an outcome of this movement. So far the structure of the nation had been essentially mediaeval; so, too, had been its law. If we are to seek the fundamental notes of this mediaeval policy we shall find that they were based upon the fact that the normal occupation of the bulk of the inhabitants was agriculture. The great source of wealth was the land, and such capitalism as existed looked mainly to the land for its profits. The social structure of society was built upon this idea. The legal aspect of all this is clearly visible. Land was the principal form of wealth, and therefore the principal source of power, and the law had to take account of this situation. First of all the King’s Court assumed complete control over the land—and thereby over the landowners. The law of land was rapidly developed to an astonishing degree, and every means was adopted of protecting landed property to the fullest extent. It was only natural that the land should therefore be the symbol of economic and social permanence, and that efforts should be made to perpetuate the social system founded upon it.
Even in the middle ages, however, there were the beginnings of other forms of wealth, and as time proceeds commerce takes an increasing place in national life. Nevertheless for a long time it was the policy of the law to separate the two; it is curious to observe that merchants very nearly became an estate of the realm and occasionally we find what looks like a parliament of merchants;1 there was a chance that in England as in some other countries there might have grown up a House of Merchants in Parliament. The separation of commerce from the normal occupation of the nation was further emphasised by the fact that the merchants had their own organisation and their own law.2 It is only as a result of many centuries of history culminating in the industrial revolution that these barriers were broken down; it is familiar knowledge that such bodies of mercantile law as those relating to bankruptcy and negotiable instruments for a long time pertained exclusively to merchants; indeed, a separate organisation was set up to supervise the affairs of insolvent debtors who were not merchants and therefore outside of the law of bankruptcy. It was only as late as 1690 that the law considered the possibility of a non-merchant being a party to a bill of exchange.3
MERCHANTS AND FINANCE
Although the middle ages were so predominantly agricultural, it is still possible and indeed very necessary to trace in them the beginnings of commerce. In English history two commodities are of particular significance, wool and wine. Wool-growing was the great source of England’s position in international politics during the middle ages. The wool which was grown in England was exported to Flanders, and there in the great Flemish fairs it was distributed
