But neither lever nor fulcrum was strong enough as yet to stir the inert mass of traditional forms. Monarchs still flattered themselves with notions of paternal government and divine right; the nobility still claimed and exercised baseless privileges which had descended from an age when their ancestors held not merely these but the land on which they rested; the burgesses still hugged, as something which had come from above, their dearly bought charter rights, now revealed as inborn liberties. They were thus hardened into a gross contentment dangerous for themselves, and into an indifference which was a menace to others. The great agricultural populations living in various degrees of serfdom still groaned under the artificial oppressions of a society which had passed away. Nominally the peasant might own certain portions of the soil, but he could not enjoy unmolested the airs which blew over it nor the streams which ran through it nor the wild things which trespassed or dwelt on it, while on every side some exasperating demand for the contribution of labor or goods or money confronted him. In short, the civilized world was in one of those transitional epochs when institutions persist, after the beliefs and conditions which molded them have utterly disappeared. The inertia of such a rock-ribbed shell is terrible, and while sometimes the erosive power of agitation and discussion suffices to weaken and destroy it, more often the volcanic fires of social convulsion are alone strong enough. The first such shock came from within the English-speaking world itself, but not in Europe. The American colonies, appreciating and applying to their own conditions the principles of the English Revolution, began, and with French assistance completed, the movement which erected in another hemisphere the American republic. Weak and tottering in its infancy, but growing ever stronger and therefore milder, its example began at once to suggest the great and peaceful reforms of the English constitution which have since followed. Threatening absolutism in the strong contrasts its citizens presented to the subjects of other lands, it has been ever since the moral support of liberal movements the world around. England herself, instead of being weakened, was strengthened by the child grown to independent maturity, and a double example of prosperity under constitutional administration was now held up to the continent of Europe.