The American revolution, which supplanted hereditary by popular rule, worked a fundamental change in the relation of the individual to the government. So far at least as the voters were concerned the government was no longer an alien institution--an authority imposed upon them from above, but an organization emanating from them--one in which they had and felt a direct proprietary interest. It was no longer a government in which the active principle was irresponsible authority, but one which rested upon the safe and trustworthy basis of popular control. The overthrow of monarchy and aristocracy necessitated a corresponding change in the idea of liberty to make it fit the new political conditions which had emerged. In so far as government had now passed into the hands of the people there was no longer any reason to fear that it would encroach upon what they regarded as their rights. With the transition, then, from class to popular sovereignty there was a corresponding change in the attitude of the people toward the government. They naturally desired to limit the authority and restrict the activity of the government as long as they felt that it was irresponsible; but as soon as they acquired an active control over it, the reason which formerly actuated them in desiring to limit its powers was no longer operative. Their ends could now be accomplished and their interests best furthered by unhampered political activity. They would now desire to remove the checks upon the government for the same reason that they formerly sought to impose them--viz., to promote their own welfare. This tendency is seen in the changes made in the state constitutions at the beginning of the American revolution. As shown in a previous chapter, they established the supremacy of the legislative body and through this branch of the government, the supremacy of the majority of the qualified voters. We have here a new conception of liberty. We see a tendency in these constitutional changes to reject the old passive view of state interference as limited by the consent of the governed and take the view that real liberty implies much more than the mere power of constitutional resistance--that it is something positive, that its essence is the power to actively control and direct the policy of the state. The early state constitutions thus represent a long step in the direction of unlimited responsible government.