The next great result of the enfranchisement of boroughs was the contest of classes, which thereupon arose inevitably from the fact itself, a contest which occupies all modern history. Europe, as at present constituted, has sprung from the struggles amongst the different orders of society. In other regions, as I have formerly stated, the contest produced very opposite effects. In Asia, for example, one class completely triumphed; the system of castes succeeded that of classes, and society fell into stagnation. Thanks be to God, no such consequence has happened in Europe. No one order has been able to vanquish or enslave the others; the contest, instead of becoming a principle of immobility, has been the cause of advancement. The relations of the different classes amongst themselves, and the necessity in which they have found themselves to struggle and to yield by turns, the variety of their interests and passions, the desire for conquest, without being able to accomplish it--from all this has resulted, perhaps, the most energetic and fruitful principle of development in European civilisation. The orders have been engaged in constant warfare: they detested each other; a deep-seated diversity in position, interests, and manners, wrought amongst them a profound moral hostility or antagonism, and yet they have progressively drawn together, amalgamated, and merged their differences. {133} Every country in Europe has witnessed a certain general spirit, a certain community of interests, ideas, and feelings, take root and gain development within its own confines, which has triumphed over dissension and division. For example, in France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the social and moral separation of the orders was still deeply planted; yet there is no doubt that the fusion was even then far advanced, and that there was a veritable French nation, not of one class exclusively, but comprising all classes, animated with a certain common sentiment, having a common social existence, and strongly impressed with nationality. Thus, from our diversity, enmity, and warfare, has arisen in modern Europe that national unity, which has become so brilliant a feature of the present times, and which is tending, day by day, to a development still more glorious and beneficial. Such are the great external, palpable, and social effects that have resulted from the revolution under review. We will now proceed to inquire what were its moral effects, or what changes it wrought in the minds of the burghers themselves, what, in fact, they became, in a moral sense, in their new position.