THE MEAXIXG OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 349
enjoyed proved advantageous to the towns. People who lived in the country saw that the towns thrived upon " liberties." They thought within themselves "Townsmen find 'liberties' a good thing. Doubtless countrymen would find them an equally good thing." Then the rustics 'made struggles for liberties and at last got them. With them came a clearer conception of per- sonal liberty. The same process with similar effects runs through the evolution of the popular idea of law in England. Under the Norman kings legal rights were concessions from the sovereign to the subject in a charter. They are now, ostensibly at least, volitions by the subjects expressing their will about the society which they compose. Again, the process is illustrated in the tedious development of the idea which was at work before the Reformation, but which did not come to maturity till it reformed the Reformation. It was the antithesis of the idea that religion is the prerogative of a privileged class, and that administration of religion belongs to that class. Men began to believe that if relgion is good for some it is good for all. They believed that if it is a prerogative of some it is a prerogative of all. They refused to believe that there is any provision in the nature of things for a part of the human race to grow fat on religion, while the rest of the race only grew lean from it. They virtually declared and maintained that so far as religion is a real benefit to anybody, its like benefits belong to everybody. They then either rejected religion as an artificial imposition upon men, or they claimed it as an equal natural right of all men in their free- dom of commerce with the univer-c
By such steps as these this rudimentary idea of the para- mount dignity of persons, regardless of their social state, has become distinct and commonplace. It has been made very spe- cific in a thousand applications. Whenever any men have reached an evident vantage ground, other men have begun to say " Either they hold that advantage as a fair reward for special work, or they have no business to occupy it at all, or, finally, it is the proper place and reward for all men, who are really entitled to the rights of im-n. "
