But the Independent movement could not confine itself to ecclesiastical matters, it was forced by logical necessity to carry its fundamental doctrines into the political sphere. As the Church, so it considered the state and every political association as the result of a compact between its original sovereign members.[68] This compact was made indeed in pursuance of divine commandment, but it remained always the ultimate legal basis of the community. It was concluded by virtue of the individual's original right and had not only to insure security and advance the general welfare, but above all to recognize and protect the innate and inalienable rights of conscience. And it is the entire people that specifically man for man concluded this compact, for by it alone could every one be bound to respect the self-created authority and the self-created law. The first indications of these religious-political ideas can be traced far back, for they were not created by the Reformation. But the practice which developed on the basis of these ideas was something unique. For the first time in history social compacts, by which states are founded, were not merely demanded, they were actually concluded. What had until then slumbered in the dust-covered manuscripts of the scholar became a powerful, life-determining movement. The men of that time believed that the state rested upon a contract, and they put their belief into practice. More recent theory of public law with only an imperfect knowledge of these events frequently employed them as examples of the possibility of founding a state by contract, without suspecting that these contracts were only the realization of an abstract theory. On October 28, 1647, there was laid before the assembled Council of Cromwell's army a draft, worked out by the Levellers, of a new constitution for England,[69] which later, greatly enlarged and modified,[70] was delivered to Parliament with the request that it be laid before the entire English people for signature.[71] In this remarkable document the power of Parliament was set forth as limited in a manner similar to that later adopted by the Americans, and particulars were enumerated which in future should not lie within the legislative power of the people's representatives. The first thing named was matters of religion, which were to be committed exclusively to the command of conscience.[72] They were reckoned among the inherent rights, the "native rights", which the people were firmly resolved to maintain with their utmost strength against all attacks.[73] Here for the first and last time in England was an inherent right of religious liberty asserted in a proposed law. This right is recognized to-day in England in legal practice, but not in any expressly formulated principle.[74] The religious conditions in England's North American colonies developed differently.