The conditions of change lay implicit in the Industrial Revolution, when a new class of men attained control of the nation's economic power.

Only then was a realignment of political forces essential.

Only then, that is to say, had the time arrived for a new theory of the State.
The political ideas of the eighteenth century are thus in some sort a comment upon the system established by the Revolution; and that is, in its turn, the product of the struggle between Parliament and Crown in the preceding age.

But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.

From no accusation were its statesmen more anxious to be free than from that of a belief in democratic government.