122 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
claimed on that day that the institutions of the Roman 
Empire, however useful in their time, were at last out- 
grown and superseded, and that the guidance of the 
world was henceforth to be, not in the hands of imperial 
bureaus or papal conclaves, but in the hands of the 
representatives of honest labour and the preachers of 
righteousness, unhampered by ritual or dogma. The 
independence of the United States was the first great 
lesson which was drawn from this solemn proclama- 
tion. Our own history is to-day the first extended 
commentary which is gradually unfolding to men’s 
minds the latent significance of the compact by which 
the vanquished Old Régime of France renounced its 
pretensions to guide the world. In days to come, the 
lesson will be taken up and reiterated by other great 
communities planted by England, in Africa, in Aus- 
tralia, and the islands of the Pacific, until barbarous 
sacerdotalism and despotic privilege shall have van- 
ished from the face of the earth, and the principles of 
Protestantism, rightly understood, and of English self- 
government, shall have become forever the undisputed 
possession of all mankind. 
