The historically unenlightened occasionally claim that America was founded "on Christian principles." While the founding fathers were not for the most part atheists (a position that seemed more problematic in the eighteenth century, prior to the development of modern insights into biology and epistemology), they were representative of an intellectual movement that was overwhelmingly secular, particularly relative to its time. The early American patriots, like other Enlightenment thinkers, derived their political beliefs from philosophy and from a commitment to reason rather than from faith or Biblical sources. While Old World governments remained dominated by entrenched ecclesiastical conservatism, the new nation arose from a culture emphasizing humanism, science, and the idea of progress. It would be far more historically accurate to say that America was founded on liberal principles, despite its fatal compromises of those principles. Its birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, remains the most eloquent summary of those principles, and its unique association with the idea of human liberty provides ample justification to those who regard the latter as an "American" idea.
In Europe, the progressive ideas of Enlightenment liberalism had greatest influence in England (and to some extent in France). In the wake of the Revolution of 1688, roughly coinciding with Locke's political writings, many of the state controls on commerce and invention were abolished. Although a true free market was by no means achieved, increasing economic freedom ushered in a period of rapid technological development. By the early nineteenth century, these improvements had acquired such momentum that we now refer to that period as the Industrial Revolution.     

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