The revolutionary period taught European statesmen and political thinkers that political efficiency and responsibility both implied some degree of popular representation.  Such representation did not necessarily go as far as thorough-going democrats would like.  It did not necessarily transfer the source of political authority from the crown to the people.  It did not necessarily bring with it, as in France, the overthrow of those political and social institutions which constituted the traditional structure of the national life.  But it did imply that the government should make itself expressly responsible to public opinion, and should consult public opinion about all important questions of public policy.  A certain amount of political freedom was shown to be indispensable to the making of a nation, and the granting of this amount of political freedom was no more than a fulfillment of the historical process in which the nations of Europe had originated.

The people of Europe had drifted into groups, the members of which, for one reason or another, were capable of effective political association.  This association was not based at bottom on physical conditions.  It was not dependent on a blood bond, because as a matter of fact the racial composition of the European peoples is exceedingly mixed.  It was partly conditioned on geographical continuity without being necessarily caused thereby, and was wholly independent of any uniformity of climate.  The association was in the beginning largely a matter of convenience or a matter of habit.  Those associations endured which proved under stress of historical vicissitudes to be worthy of endurance.  The longer any particular association endured, the more firm it became in political structure and the more definite in policy.  Its citizens became accustomed to association one with another, and they became accustomed to those political and social forms which supplied the machinery of joint action.  Certain institutions and ideas were selected by the pressure of historical events and were capitalized into the effective local political and social traditions.  These traditions constituted the substance of the political and social bond.  They provided the forms which enabled the people of any group to realize a joint purpose or, if necessary, to discuss serious differences.  In their absence the very foundation of permanent political cohesion was lacking.  For a while the protection of these groups against domestic and foreign enemies demanded, as we have seen, the exercise of an absolute political authority and the severe suppression of any but time-honored individual or class interests; but when comparative order had been secured, a higher standard of association gradually came to prevail.  Differences of conviction and interest among individuals and classes, which formerly were suppressed or ignored, could no longer be considered either as so dangerous to public safety as to demand suppression or as so insignificant as to justify indifference.