ABSTRACT
In the period between the Reformation and the French Revolution a new social class established its title to a full share in the control of the state. Revolution and war presided over its emergence from the womb; and it is not beyond the mark to say that there was hardly a period until 1848 when its growth was not arrested by the challenge of violent reaction. Men fight passionately to retain those wonted habits in which their privileges are involved; and liberalism was nothing so much as a challenge to vested interests rendered sacred by the traditions of half a thousand years. Liberalism has usually, by reason of its origins, been hostile to the claims of churches. Liberalism came as a new ideology to fit the needs of a new world. Mercantilism is the first step taken by the emerging secular state on the road to the full achievement of liberalism.
