Even in countries where the people were understood to enjoy certain political privileges, transmitted from remote ages, or wrested from their princes on some favourable occasions, these principles were generally prevalent; and, availing himself of them, it was easy for an ambitious and powerful monarch to violate the rights of the people with impunity, and upon a constitution, the forms of which were friendly to popular liberty, to establish an administration completely arbitrary and despotic. The contest between papal sovereignty and the authority of general councils, which was carried on {301} during the fifteenth century, elicited some of the essential principles of liberty, which were afterwards applied to political government. The revival of learning, by unfolding the principles of legislation, and modes of government in the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, gradually led to more liberal notions on this subject. But these were confined to a few, and had no influence upon the general state of society. The spirit infused by philosophy and literature is too feeble and contracted to produce a radical reform of established abuses; and learned men, proud of their own superior illumination, and satisfied with the liberty of indulging their speculations, have generally been too indifferent or too timid to attempt the improvement of the multitude. It is to the religious spirit excited during the sixteenth century, which spread rapidly through Europe, and diffused itself among all classes of men, that we are chiefly indebted for the propagation of the genuine principles of rational liberty, and the consequent amelioration of government.