There are also instances of governmental action being directly influenced by the practice of other states, even when there has been no common action.  The two most striking reforms of recent years have been in education and religious toleration.  Of education enough has already been said.  The interest from our point of view here is chiefly in the effect of education on social structure.  It is increasingly evident that of all forces for transforming a nation, education is the most powerful; but no one nation can transform its education effectively without respect to the mistakes and successes of its neighbours.  This has been perceived and acted upon.  The influence, for example, of Germany on England is sufficiently well known.  German precedents were quoted in the House of Commons in the early days of state education for England:  and the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876 were largely due to the impression made in England by the success of state education in Prussia.  Coleridge, Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold definitely acknowledged a debt to Germany.  But Germany owed something to England in the perception of the value of surroundings and corporate life in schools.  France also was affected by English education; and, in fact, French educators had to come to England to find the thing for which the French gave us the name—­Esprit de Corps.

The United States have been very definitely influenced in their University education both by Germany and England; and their Government has in primary education certainly established for all states the transforming possibilities of a school system.  It must be remembered that the crudity of civilization and its apparent corruption in the United States are European not American.  It is because Europe has neglected its duty, enslaved and brutalized its peoples, that social and political evil enters with the immigrants; and all this mass of European incompetence, the result of neglect or evil-doing in Ireland, Poland, the Slavonic Countries and Italy, the Government of the United States exorcises with education:  and the effect is spreading beyond the frontiers of the States.  A further effect of influence passing from nation to nation has been the change with regard to the relations of State and Church.  In England it is some years since the State persecuted in the supposed interest of religion; but we remember that the abolition of tests against Roman Catholics was as late as 1830 and as against Jews as late as 1850.  Even the most backward of European countries have been affected by the general feeling.  In 1874 Austria for the first time allowed any creed, not dangerous to morals, to be preached; and ecclesiastical power is not any longer to be used against any but members of the particular Church which is offended.  In Spain there are still some obstacles to public manifestations of any religious belief but that which is most prevalent; free worship in private, however, is at last allowed.  Thus, the general tendency, spreading from the nations which are most intricately divided in religion, has been towards what is called toleration.  Connected with this has been the gradual recognition of civil marriage; in which the old privilege of the most powerful Church is no longer recognized by the modern State.  Law and custom have both changed.