But during the latter part of the nineteenth century there began to grow up, largely at first through the influence of T. H. Green, influenced in his turn by Kant and Hegel, an entirely different theory of the state. The state was now not to be subordinate to the individual, but it was to be the fulfilment of the individual. Man was to get his rights and his liberty from membership in society. Green had at once a large influence on the political thought of England and America, and gradually, with other influences, upon practical politics. The growing recognition of the right and duty of the state to foster the life of its members, so clearly and unequivocally expressed in the social legislation of Lloyd George, we see as early as the Education Act of 1870, the Factory Act of 1878 (which systematized and extended previous Factory Acts), and the various mines and collieries acts from 1872. I do not mean to imply that the growing activity of the state was due entirely or mainly to the change of theory in regard to the individual and the state; when the disastrous results of _laissez-faire_ were seen, then people demanded state regulation of industry. Theory and practice have acted and reacted on each other. Some one must trace for us, step by step, the interaction of theory and practice in regard to the individual and his relation to society, from the Middle Ages down to the present day.[69] What has been the trend of our development in America? Particularism was at its zenith when our government was founded. Our growth has been away from particularism and towards a true individualism.[70] It is usual to say that the framers of our constitution were individualists and gave to our government an individualistic turn. We must examine this. They did safeguard and protect the individual in his life and property, they did make the bills of rights an authoritative part of our constitutions, they did make it possible for individuals to aggrandize themselves at the expense of society, their ideal of justice was indeed of individual not of social justice. And yet all this was negative. The individual was given no large positive function. The individual was feared and suspected. Our early constitutions showed no faith in men: the Massachusetts constitution expressly stated that it was not a government of men. The law of the land was embodied in written documents with great difficulty of amendment just because the people were not trusted. As we look at the crudities of the Declaration of Independence, as we examine our aristocratic state constitutions, as we study our restricted federal constitution, as we read the borrowed philosophy of our early statesmen, we see very little indication of modern democracy with its splendid faith in man, but a tendency towards aristocracy and a lack of real individualism on every side.