ABSTRACT
The currents of opinion which we have been studying converge in John Bellers. We have seen how the struggle between two sections of the ruling classes for political dominion, in its sequel, brought upon the political stage the most advanced sections of the working classes of the period, and thus led to the formulation of demands which anticipate the programme of modern political democracy. We have also seen how a still lower stratum of the working class produced champions, who, adopting political shibboleths and utilizing religious communistic doctrines imported from other countries, elaborated a system of communism which was more advanced than any similar previous doctrines. We have further seen how the increasing distress of the poorer classes, side by side with the increasing prosperity of the comfortable classes, gave rise to a middle-class school of philanthropism, full of projects of all kinds for providing a remedy by special institutions—suggestions that what was formerly the task of the Church should be performed by the State, by private parishes, or by organized voluntary effort. We have seen too how a new conception of the State gained ground, according to which the State, instead of being an organ of a dominant aristocracy or the tool of a dynasty, should become an instrument for promoting the welfare of all; and we further saw how there developed from the embittered strife of religious parties an advanced anti-clerical, anti-dogmatic school of thought, which led to atheism or deism in one direction, and to the founding of a religion without ritual, viz., Quakerism, in another.
