Excerpt from Privilege and Democracy in America Down to the beginning of the nineteenth century government was merely the will of a class. Politics mirrored the wish of the privileged orders. And the motive which inspired the governing classes was primarily an economic one. This interpretation of politics has only begun to influence the writing of history. Yet in this motive is to be found the cause of wars and of peace, of intrigue and of diplomacy, of force and of fraud, of practically all legislation relating to religion, taxation, industry, and the rela tion of classes. The struggles of kings and parlia ments, of burghers and peasants, of cities and over lords had their origin in the desire to use the agencies of government for the advantage of one or the other of the contending orders. We have only to study the Parliamentary struggle which has just closed in Great Britain, to see a confirmation of this fact. In this instance the conflict was carried on by peaceful means. But the motive of the struggle was the same. It was a warfare of classes, organized through parties instead of with armed retainers, but bent on the control of the govern ment for economic advantage. 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.