A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Even in pre-industrial France, the main impulse to overthrow the ancien régime had come from groups outside the landed class: lawyers, journalists, businesspeople, urban workers with specialist skills – what is clumsily but unavoidably called the middle class. In the more decorous politics of Britain as much as in mainland Europe, middle-class groups now sought to legislate into being political institutions to give themselves voices in national affairs appropriate to their wealth and talent, at least to share power with the landed aristocracy. They aimed to create structures designed to reward ability and personal achievement rather than birth, and to gain the right to express their political and religious opinions as they wished. This was the politics of liberalism.