Under these reactionary influences the women of England seemed, in the eighteenth century, to have entirely lost their birthright, and fallen into line with the women of the world. The eighteenth century is, indeed, a dramatic moment in the whole story of feminism. The earlier power of English women was generally forgotten; the ambition and struggle of women in older civilisations were quite unknown; the fire of the Renaissance had sunk again, leaving only a few women scattered over Europe with a zeal for culture. The world over woman was subordinate and submissive. Then there broke out a series of political eruptions that changed the face of the world, and awakened a fresh ambition in women that would never again be stilled. The first of these great disturbances was the Declaration of Independence on the part of the American colonies. I have said that certain fundamental changes took place during the nineteenth century that made the raising of the feminist claim quite inevitable, and at the same time made the refusal of the claim more illogical and unjust than it had ever been before. The first and chief of these changes was the democratisation of politics. The mass of the women laboured under no political sex-disability in the eighteenth century, because the mass of the men had no political power at all. In England, under a corrupt and degenerate Parliamentary system, a proportion of the men had a semblance of power; in other countries the mass of the men had not even the shadow of it. France had not summoned its States-General, in which the Third Estate had a nominal representation, since 1614. The world was ruled by castes of priests and nobles, and the higher and wealthier women often had the satisfaction of ruling their rulers. When this system altered, when political power began to spread over the middle class and working men, the woman question would arise spontaneously and command attention.