Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/575

 17. BEALE: JURISPRUDENCE 561 people to a voice in the government. The French revolu- tion had swept feudal rights from the civilized world. Al- though the French Republic was just passing into the French Empire, it was an empire which belonged to the people, and one of which they were proud. The Emperor was the rep- resentative and the idol, not of an aristocracy, but of his peasants and his common soldiers. The dreams of Napo- leon himself, to be sure, were not of an individualistic para- dise, where each man's personality should have free play and restraint on his inclinations be reduced to the minimum; but so far as he was able to put his centralizing ideals into execution he raised but a temporary dam, which first spread the flood of liberty over all Europe and was finally swept away by the force of the current. Starting from this point, the spirit of the time for more than a generation was humanitarian and individualistic. In political affairs independence was attempted by almost every subordinate people in the civilized world, and was attained by the South American colonies, by Greece, and by Belgium. In religion freethinking prevailed, and every creed was on the defensive. In society women and children were emanci- pated. Slavery was abolished, and the prisons were re- formed. It was a destructive rather than a constructive age, and its thinkers were iconoclasts. But a change, beginning with the second third of the cen- tury, was gradually accomplished. The application of the forces of steam and electricity to manufacture and trans- portation has had a greater effect on human life and thought than any other event of modern times. The enormous power exerted by these forces required great collections of labor and capital to make them effective. Association became the rule in business affairs, and as it proved effectual there, the principle of association became more and more readily ac- cepted in social and political affairs, until it has finally be- come the dominating idea of the time. The balance has swung ; the men of our time are more interested in the rights of men than in the rights of man ; the whole has come to be regarded as of more value than the separate parts. Be- ginning with the construction of railroads, the idea attained