Democracy from the Commercial Revolu tion to the Industrial Revolution.— Beginning with the opening of the 16th century and ex tending over about two centuries there occurred that great transformation which marks the dawn of modern society— the )Commercial Revolution.* The explorations and discoveries and the resulting contact with new cultures broke through the ((cake* of medieval custom and opened the way for the development of modern institutions and ideas. The increased volume of wealth at the disposal of the mon arch, as a result of the °intervention of capital,* enabled him to develop a paid officialdom and army and by their assistance to crush feudalism and perfect the national state. But the most important of all of its results was the great increase of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, which, as Professor Hayes has so well ex plained, was destined for centuries to be the centre from which all liberalizing and democra tizing influences spread and which ultimately secured the well-nigh universal destruction of the autocratic and exclusive social and political regime which had characterized the Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation made few contributions to democracy in politics. In fact, it made the lot of the peasantry harder than be fore, but it did increase the power of the upper middle class and thus accelerated the movement already begun by the commercial revolution.
In England during this period the new middle class effected the greatest transformation of the social and political order which was ac complished before the 19th century. By the beginning of the 17th century the power of the feudal nobility had generally vanished, serf dom had disappeared and the restrictive gild system of industrial organization had been prac tically eliminated. Before the close of the cen tury, through successive concessions from the king and through the revolutions of 1649 and 1689, the bourgeoisie had dethroned two auto cratic monarchs, had eliminated the rule of royal arbitrariness in politics and law, had brought about the predominance of Parliament in the government and had enacted into a con stitutional document those guarantees which have since come to be recognized as the most fundamental of human rights. While oppressive religious disabilities, exclusive property qualifi cations for participation in political life and the perpetuation of many of the social phases of medieval feudal aristocracy all operated to prevent England from being classed as a demo cratic nation in 1700, the fact that the middle class had created a constitutional system and had secured the complete domination of the Parliament —the popular branch of the gov ernment — constituted an epoch-making step toward the ultimate development of democracy.
In France, even more than in Tudor Eng land, the commercial revolution at first made rather for the development of royal absolutism than for the growth of constitutional or demo cratic government. The Estates-General, sum
moned in 1614 for the last time in 175 years, made a pathetic failure as compared with the achievements of the English "Long Parliament' and the hope of a gradual evolution of legis lative supremacy in France, such as had taken place in England, perished. The political power of the feudal nobility was crushed by Riche lieu's centralizing policies and by the sup pression of the "Fronde* in 1652, but they re tained their oppressive social and economic privileges until the "August days' of 1789. The French Revolution of 1789 to 1795 was the product of the abuses of the regime,* of the revolutionary political theory of the English Whigs, of the intellectual impulse from the French aphilosophes* and of the American ex ample of a successful experiment with revolu tion and the beginnings of democracy. The "third estate* had been too weak in 1614 suc cessfully to oppose the combined strength of the monarch and the first two estates, but their strength had so increased by 1789, as a result of the effects of the commercial revolution, that they were able to coerce the monarch, the weakened nobility and the clergy and they pro ceeded to clear away not only the vestiges of feudalism but also the oppression of the Church and the tyranny of the monarch. The calling of the Estates-General in 1789 is worthy of passing mention in any historical survey of the development of democracy because the first instance in history of the exercise of universal manhood suffrage occurred in the election of the deputies of the third estate. The most significant achievements of the French Revolu tion were the abolition of these economic and social aspects of feudalism which still persisted, the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1791 and of a republic in 1792. Though many of these reforms proved transitory, their effect was never entirely lost and they constituted the stimulus and precedent for the more gradual development of French democracy in the 19th tentu ry.
In all ether important European states, with the exception of the abortive reforms of Joseph II of Austria, the old regime with all of its medieval institutions and practices remained practically undisturbed until the 19th century. It was not until after the influence of the French Revolution was spread throughout Europe by Napoleon, and the °Industrial Revo lution>) had still further increased the numerical strength of the bourgeoisie, that this class was able to carry its liberalizing activities with some degree of success into central, southern and eastern Europe.