280 POLITICS 



eralism, proscribed and hunted by the triumphant powers, lived 

 nevertheless, and resisted its adversaries with the weapons that 

 were nearest at hand - - conspiracy, assassination, insurrection - 

 as well as by ceaseless agitation and debate, so far as these w.ere 

 permitted in practical politics, and at last, but only when the middle 

 of the century had been reached, it had secured a definitive triumph 

 throughout the better part of Europe. After the revolutionary wave 

 of 1848, the prevailing governmental systems, as well as the prevail- 

 ing beliefs in both scientific and popular thought, expressed with 

 more or less completeness the principles for which the liberals had 

 contended. And far more fully than anywhere in Europe,- these 

 principles pervaded the government and the general- life of that 

 growing people across the Atlantic, whose development had already 

 begun to make them a factor of large significance in the affairs of 

 the civilized world. 



This conflict between liberalism and conservatism, then, may 

 be taken as marking in a general way a period in nineteenth-century 

 politics. The influence of the antithesis of doctrine appeared in 

 every phase of the political life of the time, and in most phases this 

 influence was decisive. In the internal affairs of every country, 

 the struggle for the realization of liberal ideas furnished the most 

 conspicuous incidents. France was the recognized leader and gave 

 the impulse to all Europe in this respect, and the history of her party 

 politics is merely a recital of the strife of liberalism and conserva- 

 tism. Spain and the Italian states exhibited a series of transfor- 

 mations in governmental institutions with the same division as the 

 basis. The German states experienced many vicissitudes of agita- 

 tion and insurrection, but the hand of Metternich was strong in 

 central Europe, and while liberalism got a footing in some of the 

 smaller states, the time of the greater did not come until 1848, and 

 even then the success of the liberals was but temporary in Austria 

 and greatly qualified in Prussia. England felt the effect of the 

 spirit of the times in the great struggles for Catholic emancipation 

 and Parliamentary reform and in the abortive movement of the 

 Chartists. Even Russia had a little experience of uprising for liberal 

 government in 1825 at the accession of the first Nicholas, and a very 

 serious experience with the combination of liberalism and national- 

 ism in the Polish war of 1830. And finally, at the other extreme, 

 across the Atlantic, the United States exhibited the influence of the 

 Zeitgeist by the transition from the Jeffersonian to the Jacksonian 

 type of democracy. 



When we glance at the international politics of the period we find 

 the same influence largely operative. The grtiuping of the great 



