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exercising as much influence on the government of society as it now does. Two obstacles, the one external, the other internal, checked its invasive progress.
It could not ostensibly disclose itself in the laws of the colonies which were still constrained to obey the mother-country; it was therefore obliged to spread secretly, and to gain ground in the provincial assemblies, and especially in the townships.
American society was not yet prepared to adopt it with all its consequences. The intelligence of New England, and the wealth of the country to the south of the Hudson (as I have shown in the preceding chapter), long exercised a sort of aristocratic influence, which tended to limit the exercise of social authority within the hands of a few. The public functionaries were not universally elected, and the citizens were not all of them electors. The electoral franchise was everywhere placed within certain limits, and made dependant on a certain qualification, which was exceedingly low in the north, and more considerable in the south.
The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships, took possession of the state: every class was enlisted in its cause; battles were fought, and victories obtained for it; until it became the law of laws.
A scarcely less rapid change was effected in the interior of society, where the law of descent completed the abolition of local influences.
At the very time when this consequence of the laws and of the revolution became apparent to every eye, victory was irrevocably pronounced in favour of the democratic cause. All power was, in fact, in its hands, and resistance was no longer possible. The higher orders submitted without a murmur and without a struggle to an evil which was thenceforth inevitable. The ordinary fate of falling powers awaited them; each of their several members followed his own interest; and as it was impossible to wring the power from the hands of a people which they did not detest sufficiently to brave, their only aim was to secure its good-will at any price. The most democratic laws were consequently voted by the very men whose interests they impaired: and thus, although the higher classes did not excite the passions of the people against their order, they accelerated the triumph of the new state of things; so that, by a singular change, the democratic impulse was found to be
