The mediæval councils, the military orders, the guilds, followed centuries after by the contract of the Pilgrim Fathers made in the cabin of the “Mayflower” in which they “covenanted and combined themselves into a civil body politic for their better order and preservation,” as well as the charters of the Providence Plantations, of Virginia, and of Maryland, had accustomed the people to joint action of mutual compact and deliberate agreement in defense of liberty and justice which, after all, is the mother of democracy. While the schoolmen, with scarcely an exception, as Sidwick tells us, taught that, “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” “Every constitution,” says Nicholas of Cusa, three and a half centuries before the Declaration of Independence, “is rooted in natural law and cannot be valid if it contradicts it.” “Since all are free by nature,” he continues, “all government, whether by written law or a prince, is based solely on the agreement and consent of the subject. For if by nature men are equally powerful and free, true and ordered power in the hands of one can be established only by the election and consent of the others, just as law also is established by consent.” “It is clear, therefore,” he adds, “that the binding validity of all constitutions is based on tacit and expressed agreement and consent.” And although Elizabeth had asserted in 1585 that “kings and princes sovereign owe their homage and service only to Almighty God,” and James defended the Divine Right of Kings, and the University of Cambridge, in its address to Charles II, had declared that they believed and maintained that “our kings derive not their title from the people but from God,” “Defenders of Liberty” were not wanting, Bellarmine declaring boldly, as Sir Robert Filmer tells us, that “secular or civil power is instituted by men; it is in the people unless they bestow it on a prince. This power is immediately in the whole multitude as in the subject of it. For this power is in the Divine Law, but the Divine Law hath given this power to no particular men; if the positive law be taken away, there is left no reason why amongst a multitude (who are equal) one rather than another should bear rule over the rest. Power is given by the multitude to one man or to more by the same law of nature; for the commonwealth cannot exercise this power, therefore it is bound to bestow it upon some one man or some few. It depends upon the consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a king or consul or other magistrates. And if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the kingdom into an aristocracy or democracy.”