Excerpt from The Rise of Democracy Any inquiry into the course of democratic progress in England would be confessedly imsy and superficial which did not endeavour, however brie y, to indicate the nature of the movement in its earlier stages. Is English democracy of home growth, or does it owe its chief impulse to the cognate movement in France? Was it propelled onwards by a conscious striving after new ideals, or was it merely the result of discontent aroused by material discomforts and unjust laws? Did our Radical reformers claim that they were initiating a new era for humanity at large, or were they content with redressing the ills of the time? To these and similar questions it is hoped that this little work will furnish some reply, not, as a rule, explicitly and in set terms, but rather by means of an unbiassed narrative which will leave the reader free to draw his own conclusions as to the drift of events, the full significance of which cannot as yet be fully realized. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."