By the middle of the 19th century, liberal thought concerning constitutionalism, wider suffrage, toleration of dissent, absence of arbitrariness, and policies designed to promote happiness had acquired powerful advocates in Britain and other European countries and in the United States. Despite a prevalent tendency to find fault with the U.S., European visitors considered that nation an exemplar of liberalism because of its popular culture, emphasis on equality, and wide suffrage. Nevertheless, liberalism reached a stage of crisis at this time, in relation to democracy and economic power, that was important to its later development. On the one hand, some democrats such as the French philosopher and author Jean Jacques Rousseau were not liberals. Rousseau objected to the network of voluntary, private groups that many liberals considered essential to the movement. On the other hand, most early liberals were not democrats. Neither Locke nor Voltaire had believed in universal suffrage, and even most 19th-century liberals feared mass participation in politics, holding that the so-called lower classes were uninterested in the principal values of liberalism, that is, that

Some topics in this essay:
Stuart Mill, Neither Locke, Thomas Hobbes, United Despite, French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot, Army Parliament, According Locke, John Locke, Jacques Rousseau, 19th century, locke's philosophy, liberal thinking, french philosopher,