ABSTRACT
By placing legal rights on a superhuman foundation, the inquiry into the justice, the suitability, and the social convenience of laws was inhibited. England was the first large country to experience the industrial revolution; it was in England, therefore, that the need to adapt the social order to the new economy first became urgent. But after the industrial revolution and the political and social revolutions which it caused, the only conceivable source of authority is the power of the people and the only hope of good government is the progressive refinement of the people's will. For a variety of reasons the British people did not have to face that question during the formative period of modern liberalism. They achieved a reasonably workable compromise in their special circumstances; they had a Parliament elected until recently by a limited franchise, and hedged in by an enlightened aristocracy, a civil service with strong traditions, and the deeply settled respect for the common law.
