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AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS.
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,T>Jf NEW YORK
PUBi.lC LIBRARY
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*^^A/vA^ 3--i<L6L(2^ .
AMEEICAN POLITICAL
IDEAS
^VIEWED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF
UNI\^RSAL HISTORY
THREE LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
OF GREAT BRITAIN IN MAY, 1880
THE STORY OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT SHODLETOWN
CONNECTICUT, OCTOBER 10, 1000 ^
BY
JOHN FISKE
■WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN SPENCER CLARK
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1911
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUr40AT!ONS.
R 1911 L
COPYRIGHT, 1SS5, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
COPYRIGHT, I911, BY ABBY M. FISKE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO
EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS
NOBLEST OF MEN AND DEAREST OF FRIENDS
WHOSE UNSELnSH AND UNTIRING WORK IN EDUCATING THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE IN THE PRINCIPLB9 OF SOUND PHILOSOPHY
DESEfiTES TILE GRATITUDE OF ALL MEN
3 hcbkaic tijis !3ook
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. By John Spencer Clark,
AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS .... 1
I.
THE TOWN-MEETING.
Differences in outward aspect between a village in England and
a village in Massachusetts. Life in a typical New England
mountain village. Tenure of land, domestic service, absence of
poverty and crime, universality of labour and of culture, freedom
of thought, complete democracy. This state of things is to some
extent passing away. Remarkable characteristics of the Puritan
settlers of New England, and extent to which their characters
and aims have influenced American history. Town governments
in New England. Different meanings of the word "city" in
England and America. Importance of local self-government in
the political life of the United States. Origin of the town-meet-
ing. Mr. Freeman on the cantonal assemblies of Switzerland.
The old Teutonic "mark," or dwelling-place of a clan. Political
union originally based, not on territorial contiguity, but on blood-
relationship. Divisions of the mark. Origin of the village
Common. The mark-mote. Village communities in Russia and
Hindustan. Difference between the despotism of Russia and
that of France under the Old Regime. Elements of sound po-
litical life fostered by the Russian village. Traces of the mark
vi Contents.
in England. Feudalization of Europe, and partial metamor-
phosis of the mark or township into the manor. Parallel trans-
formation of the township, in some of its features, into the parish.
The court leet and the vestry-meeting. The New England town-
meeting a revival of the ancient mark-mote. Vicissitudes of local
self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world illus-
trated in the contrasted cases of France and England. Signifi-
cant contrast between the aristocracy of England and that of the
Continent. Difference between the Teutonic conquests of Gaul
and of Britain. Growth of centralization in France. Why the
English have always been more successful than the French in
founding colonies. Struggle between France and England for
the possession of North America, and prodigious significance of
the victory of England. — pp. 9-48.
II.
THE FEDERAL UNION.
Wonderful greatness of ancient Athens. Causes of the political
failure of Greek civilization. Early stages of political aggrega-
tion, — the hundred, the (itparpia^ the cuna ; the shire, the deme,
and the pagus. Aggregation of clans into tribes. Differences in
the mode of aggregation in Greece and Rome on the one hand,
and in Teutonic countries on the other. The Ancient City. Origin
of cities in Hindustan, Germany, England, and the United States.
Religious character of the ancient city. Burghership not granted
to strangers. Consequences of the political difference between
the Grreco-Roman city and the Teutonic shire. The folk-mote, or
primary assembly, and the witena gemote, or assembly of notables.
Origin of representative government in the Teutonic shire. Re-
presentation unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The ancient
city as a school for political training. Intensity of the jealousies
Contents. vii
and rivalries between adjacent self-governing groups of men.
Smaliness of simple social aggregates and universality of warfare
in primitive times. For the formation of larger and more com-
plex social aggregates, only two methods are practicable, — con-
quest or federation. Greek attempts at employing the higher
method, that of federation. The Athenian hegemony and its over-
flow. The Achaian and ^toliau leagues. In a low stage of po-
litical development the Roman method of conquest with incorpora-
tion was the only one practicable. Peculiarities of the Roman
conquest of Italy. Causes of the universal dominion of Rome.
Advantages and disadvantages of this dominion: — on the one
hand the pax romana, and the breaking down of primitive local
superstitions and prejudices; on the other hand the partial extinc-
tion of local self-government. Despotism inevitable in the ab-
sence of representation. Causes of the political failure of the
Roman system. Partial reversion of Europe, between the fifth
and eleventh centuries, towards a more primitive type of social
structure. Power of Rome still wielded through the Church and
the imperial jurisprudence. Preservation of local self-government
in England, and at the two ends of the Rhine. The Dutch and
Swiss federations. The lesson to be learned from Switzerland.
Federation on a great scale could only be attempted successfully
by men of English political training, when working without let or
hindrance in a vast country not preoccupied by an old civiliza-
tion. Without local self-government a great Federal Union is im-
possible. Illustrations from American history. Difficulty of the
problem, and failure of the early attempts at federation in New
England. Effects of the war for independence. The "Articles
of Confederation " and the "Constitution." Pacific implications
of American federalism. — pp. 49-92.
viii Contents.
III.
"MANIFEST DESTINY."
The Americans boast of the bigness of their country. How to
"bound" the United States. "Manifest Destiny" of the "An-
glo-Saxon Race." The term "Anglo-Saxon" slovenly and mis-
leading. Statements relating to the "English Race" have a
common interest for Americans and for Englishmen. Work of
the English race in the world. The prime feature of civilization
is the diminution of warfare, which becomes possible only through
the formation of great political aggregates in which the parts
retain their local and individual freedom. In the earlier stages
of civilization, the possibility of peace can be guaranteed only
through war, but the preponderant military strength is gradually
concentrated in the hands of the most pacific communities, and
by the continuance of this process the permanent peace of the
world will ultimately be secured. Illustrations from the early
struggles of European civilization with outer barbarism, and
with aggressive civilizations of lower type. Greece and Persia.
Keltic and Teutonic enemies of Rome. The defensible frontier
of European civilization carried northward and eastward to the
Rhine by Cassar; to the Oder by Charles the Great ; to the Vis-
tula by the Teutonic Knights; to the Volga and the Oxus by
the Russians. Danger in the Dark Ages from Huns and Mon-
gols on the one hand, from Mussulmans on the other. Immense
increase of the area and physical strength of European civiliza-
tion, which can never again be in danger from outer barbarism.
Effect of all this secular turmoil upon the political institutions
of Europe. It hindered the formation of closely coherent na-
tions, and was at the same time an obstacle to the preservation
of popular liberties. Tendency towards the Asiaiicization of
European life. Opposing influences of the Church, and of the
Germanic tribal organizations. Military type of society on the
Contents. ix
Continent. Old Ar3'an self-government happily preserved in
England. Strategic position of England favourable to the early
elimination of warfare from her soil. Hence the exceptionally
normal and plastic political development of the English race.
Significant coincidence of the discovery of America with the
beginnings of the Protestant revolt against the asiaticizing ten-
dency. Significance of the struggle between Spain, France, and
England for the possession of an enormous area of virgin soil
which should insure to the conqueror an unprecedented oppor-
tunity for future development. The race which gained control
of North America must become the dominant race of the world,
and its political ideas must prevail in the struggle for life.
Moral significance of the rapid increase of the English race in
America. Fallacy of the notion that centralized governments
are needed for very large nations. It is only through federalism,
combined with local self-government, that the stability of so huge
an aggregate as the United States can be permanently maintained.
What the American government really fought for in the late Civil
War. Magnitude of the results achieved. Unprecedented mili-
tary strength shown by this most pacific and industrial of peoples.
Improbability of any future attempt to break up the Federal Union.
Stupendous future of the English race, — in Africa, in Australia,
and in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Future of the English
language. Probable further adoption of federalism. Probable
effects upon Europe of industrial competition with the United
States: impossibility of keeping up the present military armaments.
The States of Europe will be forced, by pressure of circumstances,
into some kind of federal union. A similar process will go on until
the whole of mankind shall constitute a single political body, and
warfare shall disappear forever from the face of the earth. — pp.
93-144.
THE STORY OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN . 145
INTEODUCTION.
BY JOHN SPENCER CLARK.
Among the eminent thinkers of the last half-
century, John Fiske will hold a permanent place
by virtue of three things : the wide range and the
accuracy of his knowledge ; his profound philo-
sophic insights, and his rare gift of simple lucid ex-
position. The original cast of his mind was of a
philosophico-judicial nature. lie intuitively sought
a relationship among things observable by the
human mind. Nothing in the universe stood out
isolated from and unrelated to the Cosmos as a
whole ; and the Cosmos itself was, to him, but a
manifestation of a related Infinite Eternal Unknow-
able, forever inscrutable in the reality of Ilis ex-
istence to the finite mind of man : " without whom
the world would become like the shadow of a
vision, and thought itself would vanish." This belief
in the relativity of all knowledge to an Iniinito
Eternal Unknowable, " who doeth all things well,"
but of whose ultimate reality there is no finding
out, is the keynote to all of Dr. Eiske's philosoph-
xii American Political Ideas.
ico-historic, and sociologic thinking. At the very-
beginning of his intellectual life, he was impressed
with the relativity of things in the material world
as a truth of the highest order ; and this truth
soon became coupled in his mind with another
of even greater significance — that all Cosmic
phenomena, subjective as well as objective, are
but manifestations of an Infinite Eternal Reality
that lies behind ; and that all knowledge is but an
interpretation, in terms of human experience, of
the relations that exist between this Infinite Reality
and the phenomena of the Cosmos.
It was because Dr. Fiske, in his youth, found
no adequate presentation, in Christian theology, of
the nature of this Infinite Unknowable Reality and
its relations to the phenomena of the Cosmic Uni-
verse, that he broke away from the orthodox
Christian faith in which he had been nurtured,
and was among the first to accept the philosophy
of Evolution as set forth by Mr. Spencer, in his
epoch-making work, "First Principles," published
in 1860.
Dr. Fiske was a young man nineteen years of
age when he came under the influence of Mr.
Spencer's philosophy. He had been a thoughtful
student of history; and in his mind European his-
tory lay before him as a great panorama in three
Introduction. xiii
sections : The world before Rome, — in which he
saw all the ancient world moving, as it were, down
to Rome ; the world under Rome, — in which he
saw the vast region around the Mediterranean
brought under subjection to the civilizing influence
of Roman law; the world after Rome, — in which
he saw the irruption of the barbarians, followed by
the emergence of the modern European states. As
soon as he had grasped the meaning of Evolution
and had begun to apply it to human history, a new
light was thrown upon this whole historic panorama.
He could no longer regard it as a vast display of
barbaric slaughter, in which the whole region might
be said to have been bathed in human blood, and
all without meaning or purpose. The new philo-
sophy started fresh lines of historic thought in his
mind: Present civilization in Europe and America
is the outcome of these centuries of horrid warfare ;
and more and more the minds of men are turninjj
to the arts of peace. Is not this fact indicative of
another and an universal fact: that underlying all
forms of religious faith as well as of social or polit-
ical organization, there exist certain ethical princi-
ples of conduct which are forever working for the
intellectual and moral advancement of mankind ?
In other words, are there not laws of sociology,
governing man's development from barbarism to
xiv American Political Ideas.
civilization, which are just as operative in human
history as are the laws of physics in the world of
material things ? Is there not, in fact, a science of
history ?
Accordingly, with these thoughts stirring in his
mind, he began, immediately after leaving college,
and before Mr. Spencer had entered upon the soci-
ological bearings of his philosophy of Evolution,
to apply the new philosophy to the interpretation
of history, and collaterally, to the genesis and
evolution of language. When Dr. Fiske became
interested in this line of thought, the very idea of
a science of History seemed absurd, notwithstand-
ing the pregnant thought of Vico, jMontesquieu,
Voltaire, Comte,and Buckle. Though science, with
slow but unceasing steps, had advanced through
the fields of mathematical, astronomical, physical,
chemical, biological, and sociological phenomena,
transforming unsightly incoherence into majestic
order ; the province of history was declared to be
one which science is forever incompetent to rule,
that the results of human volition can never be-
come amenable to systematic treatment. In fact,
until the philosophy of Evolution had been pro-
pounded, there was no basis for a science of History.
One of his first literary efforts was directed against
what he called *'the prevailing illusion, that social
Introduction, xv
changes do not, like physical changes, conform to
fixed and ascertainable laws " ; and wherein, after a
lucid analysis and presentation of some of the pro-
blems of history and philosophy, he reached the
conclusion " that social changes, as well as phys-
ical changes, are within the sphere of immutable
law, concerning which Hooker has said, with no
less truth than sublimity, that 'her seat is the
bosom of God, and her voice the harmony of the
world.' "
This is not the place to review Dr. Fiske's
merits as a philosophic thinker, or as an historian.
These are points which will receive due consider-
ation in the forthcoming presentation of his life-
work. Here we have to consider a memorable
episode in his life, which was the culmination of
some delightful experiences ; and which has left
the world enriched with a fine example of en-
nobling philosophico-historic thinking, made
specially attractive through its embodiment of the
highest principles of literary art.
In June, 1879, at the request of Prof. Huxley,
Dr. Fiske gave a course of six lectures at University
College, London, on the subject of '' America's
Place in History." The arrangements for these
lectures were made by Prof. Huxley. In these
lectures Dr. Fiske treated in a broad, philosophical
xvi American Political Ideas,
way the underlying connections between European
history of the 16th and 17th centuries and the
colonization of America ; with special emphasis
upon the fact that while England, in planting
her colonies, gave them a great measure of self-
government, France and Spain, on the other hand,
planted their colonies either as military stations,
or for purposes of conquest and spoliation, and
held them subject to the rigors of military law.
He then pointed out how the English colonies had
developed the English idea of local self-govern-
ment through representation, adding thereto fed-
eration, until, in the United States, there had
arisen another England, with Anglo-American po-
litical ideas capable of indefinite expansion among
the peace-loving nations of the globe.
His theme, while in line with the thought of
the eminent historian Mr. Freeman, was, in the
form of its presentation, distinctly his own. Its
chief significance was his presentation of the po-
litical solidarity of the peoples of England and the
United States, and his suggestion of their proba-
ble dominance in the world politics of the future.
These lectures were received with marked ex-
pressions of appreciation by his English audience ;
and as they were the forerunners of the lectures
we are about to consider ; and as in his letters to
Introduction. xvii
Mrs. Fiske he gave such a graphic account of his
audience and their enthusiasm, together with such
a frank expression of his personal feelings during
their delivery, that his account is of much auto-
biographical as well as of historic interest, at the
present time, I therefore give four extracts from
his letters, which are marked by the many fine
qualities of his style. The first lecture was deliv-
ered June 11, 1879. He writes :
" Wednesday 11th. Eighteenth anniversary of the day
when I first met you on the verandah at Miss Upham's
(Cambridge).* First lecture at University College. There
are two theatres at the London University. Huxley chose
the smaller one, seating about 400, for he said that would
be a large audience for London anyway. J. Bull is not
such a lecture-going animal as the Yankee. Huxley did n't
think I would get a room full no matter how good the
lecture might be. Conway was sanguine enough to pre-
dict at least 200. All agreed that to fill the room, at
such short notice, would be enough of a success to \)vo-
AncQ famous results, — much more than one could rea-
sonably expect.
* lie was then a Sophomore at Harvard. When Dr. Fiske's
letters are pubhshed the fact will be shown that no matter
whore he was or how occiii)ied, he never forgot three anni-
versaries : his first meeting Mrs. Fiske, Uieir engagement,
their marriage.
f
xviii Americaji Political Ideas.
" Well, my dear, you may believe I was nervous be-
yond my wont. I felt sick all Wednesday forenoon, and
all unstrung with anxiety. I feared there would n't be
50 people. If there had been a small audience I should
have been disheartened and should have made a poor
appearance. At 10 a.m. the sky grew black and all
London was dark ; a gloomier day I never saw. At 11
down came the rain in torrents, pouring like an Ameri-
can rain of the most determined kind. The streets ran in
rivulets : you needed an India-rubber overcoat and over-
shoes ; I never saw it rain so hard before in London ;
and at 2. 30 when I got to the lecture room it was still
pouring in bucket-fulls, and I was so unhappy I could,
hardly keep from tears. Two young American girls
were in the room — not another soul till 2.50. O dear,
thought I, what if I should have no audience but these
two young girls ! All at once came a rattle of hansom
cabs, and in poured the people ! Within five minutes in
came some two hundred ; and did n't my heart beat with
gladness ! Then entered Huxley, and the two hundred
applauded. Then Sime, and Conway, and Ralston, and
Baron Bunsen,* and so on till by 3.05 the room was full
— a good four hundred I should say : hardly any space
left. My spirits rose to the boiling-point. When I got up
I was greeted with loud applause and I forgot there
* James Sime, a distinguished German scholar and editorial
writer ; Rev. Moncure D. Conway ; William Ralston, an
eminent scholar, in Russian mythology ; Baron Ernest de
Bunsen, son of Baron von Bunsen the Egyptologist.
Introduction.
XIX
ever was any such animal as John FIske and went to
work with a gusto. I must have outdone myself entirely,
I was interrupted every few minutes with ai)plause, at
remarks which we should n't notice in America, but which
seemed to hit them here most forcibly. When I got through
they applauded so long, I had to get up and make a bow ;
and then they went at it again till I had to get up again
and say that I was very much pleased and gratified by
their kind sympathy ; and then I had a third long round
of applause with cheers and Bravos.
" Up came Huxley and squeezed my hand and said,
* My dear Fiske, you have gone beyond anything we
could have expected ; do you know you have had the very
cream of London to hear you ? ' Sime came up and said,
* My dear boy, I can't tell how delighted I am : you
have entranced us all.' Baron Bunsen said, ' I am happy
to have de honour of hear so beautiful discourse : accept
my most warm congratulashdn. You do please dese Lon-
don people most extremely.' Ralston said, ' Fiske, I wish
you could bite some of our public speakers and infect them
with some of your eloquence ! ' Henry Holt * was there
and he said, * Fact is, John, you have conquered your
audience this time. I 'm glad I was here ; these things
don't come to a man often.'
" Well, my dear, I feel quite jubilant, naturally enough
— and so to keep the blessed anniversary of the day
when first we two did meet, I sent you my brief telegram
* Ileury Holt, the publisher, New York.
XX American Political Ideas.
* Glorious, ' which I thought you would understand in
the main and immediately transmit to my mother and
my fairy godmother." *
The lectures so auspiciously opened deepened in
interest to the very end. Of Huxley's interest in
the second lecture he writes :
" Friday, 13th. Second lecture : fine day and room
packed ; at least 80 to 100 standing up in the aisles ;
huge applause. Huxley told me he thought I was mak-
ing a really ' tremendous hit ' (those were his words,
— * tremendous hit ') and that a great deal would come
of it hereafter. ' For my own part, my dear Fiske,'
he added, ' I will frankly say that I have never been
so enchanted in all my life. Henceforth I shall tell
all my friends that there is no subject so interesting as
the early history of America.' Those were Huxley's
words."
Of the fourth lecture and Mr. Herbert Spen-
cer's interest he writes :
" Audience increasing and more enthusiastic than ever.
Spencer said after the lecture that he was surprised at
the tremendous grasp I had on the whole field of his-
tory, and the art with which I used such a wealth of
materials. Said I had given him new ideas of sociology,
* His grandmother.
Introduction. xxi
and that if I would stick to history I could go beyond
anything that had been done. Said still more : in fact,
he was quite as enthusiastic as . I never saw Spencer
warm up so. I said I did n't really dream, when writing
this, that there could be anything so new about it.
* Well,' said Spencer, ' it is new anyway ; and you are
opening a new world of reflections to me, and I shall
come to the rest of the lectures to be taught.'' "
And of the last lecture we have this account :
" Friday, June 27th. A great day. Went out to
Spencer's and lunched with him, and we went together
to the last lecture. Room jammed : every seat full, extra
benches full, people crowding up on the platform where I
stood, all the aisles packed full of people standing, people
perched up on the ledges of the deep windows, and a
crowd at each door extending several yards out into the
entry ways ! ! ! I never had such a sensation of ' filling
a house ' before, though I had numerically larger audi-
ences at Baltimore. Now here is one of the unforeseen
ways in which you make a ' hit ' when you talk to a some-
what foreign audience. I wrote about Africa quietly
and philosophically, foretelling what must happen there,
as anyone can of course foresee. I told it simply, and my
Boston audience did not single it out for special notice,
as why should they ? But I was now addressing a Brit-
ish audience, and these are the days when KiKjland is
in mourn hi r/ for husbands, brothers, sons, slain in horrid
warfare with the Zulus, and all England is as tender
xxii American Political Ideas.
about Africa, as we were fifteen years ago about the
South. When I began to speak of the future of the
English race in Africa I became aware of an immense
silence, a kind of breathlessness, all over the room — al-
though it had been extremely quiet before. After three
or four more sentences, I heard some deep breathing
and murmurs, and ' hushes.' All at once, when I came
to round the parallel of the English career in America
and Africa, there came up one stupendous SHOUT, —
not a common demonstration of approval, but a deafening
SHOUT of exultation.
" At the end of the lecture they fairly howled ap-
plause. Gentlemen stood up on the benches and waved
their hats ; ladies stood up on the benches and fluttered
their handkerchiefs ; and they kept it up until I had
to make a pretty little speech. Then they clamoured
again, and one old white-haired man made a speech of
thanks ; and then another gentleman got up and seconded
the other with another pretty little speech, winding up
by proposing three cheers for me ; and they gave three
rousing cheers, so that I had to bow and smile and
thank 'em once more. Then about a hundred or more
came up to shake hands and say pretty things. Spencer
kept his bright eyes fastened on me all through the lec-
ture, and after all was over he said : ' Well, my boy, you
have earned your success : it was the most glorious lec-
ture I ever listened to in my life.' Ditto or similarly,
Ralston and Sime. The ' 'orrid 'Uxley ' was not there
that day — too busy."
Introduction.
XXlll
After such a successful appearance before a
critical English audience, Prof. Huxley was insist-
ent that Dr. Fiske should give the following year an-
other course of lectures in London, and before the
Royal Institution, — an appearance which would
open to him the best audiences in Great Britain. In
a letter written July 12, 1879, Dr. Fiske gives an
account of a delightful evening at the Huxleys',
where, after the family had retired, he and Prof.
Huxley definitely planned for the next year's
course. It was Prof. Huxley's suggestion that
Dr. Fiske should take for this theme, " American
Political Ideas " and apply to them the law of
Evolution, tracing their genesis back to the early
Aryans. He was so much in earnest in the matter,
that he assured Dr. Fiske that if he could have a
synopsis of the lectures in the course of a few months,
he would undertake to negotiate for their delivery
before the Royal Institution, and also in Edin-
burgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and in any other
places where Dr. Fiske would like to appear.
Prof. Huxley's suggestions for the lectures were
in complete harmony with Dr. Fiske'sown thought;
and his offer of assistance was so sincere and cor-
dial that Dr. Fiske gratefully accepted it. Early
in January following, — 1880 — Dr. Fiske sent
Prof. Huxley a syllabus of the lectures, which was
xxiv American Political Ideas.
substantially what appears in the present volume
as the " Contents " of the lectures. Prof. Huxley-
had no diflBculty in getting from the Royal Institu-
tion an invitation to Dr. Fiske for their delivery
at the following dates: May 18, 25, and June 1,
1880.
An incident in connection with this invitation is
worth noting. Dr. Fiske's original title for the lec-
tures was, " American Political Ideas, viewed from
the Standpoint of Evolution," and Prof. Huxley
accepted this title. The Directors of the Royal
Institution, however, objected to the word " Evolu-
tion," and suggested " Universal History " in its
place — a suggestion which was accepted by Prof.
Huxley and Dr. Fiske. This simple incident in-
dicates clearly the ticklish, unsettled condition of
the philosophic thought of the time. Whoever
can recall the period about 1880, will recognize it
as a period when the doctrine of Evolution was
slowly coming into its own, accompanied by much
negative thought which a little later was dubbed
Agnosticism. How rapidly modern thought on
ultimate questions is developing, is shown in the
fact that only thirty years ago the doctrine of
Evolution, now the generally accepted philosophy
of the Cosmos, was taboo at the Royal Institution.
Dr. Fiske was accompanied by Mrs. Fiske on
Introduction. xxv
his visit to England for the delivery of these lec-
tures, hence we have no record of his experiences
in delivering them such as he gave in his letters to
her of his experiences with the lectures of the
previous year. It is in evidence, however, that he
wasgreetedby a very distinguished audience, among
whom was his warm personal friend and former
Professor at Harvard, the American Ambassador
to the court of St. James, James Russell Lowell,
— and that the lectures were received with marks
of appreciation no less cordial than were given to
the lectures of the previous year.
Prof. Huxley presided at the opening lecture,
and introduced Dr. Fiske in the following felicitous
way ; —
" There are persons noted for knowing many things,
and knowing them all badly. Some people class me
among these unfortunate persons. I am credited with
knowing a good deal about Theology, and with knowing
it very badly. My consolation under this infliction is,
that I am no worse off than my tlieological critics ; for I ob-
serve that when tliey undertake to enligliten us on Science,
they confess to an ignorance which is fully as great if not
greater, than is my ignorance of Theology. However
this may be, I think we are all ready to confess, tliat what
we know about American Political Ideas, we know very
badly. Now our good friend has come across the sea to
xxvi American Political Ideas.
relieve our ignorance ; to tell us what he knows about
American Political Ideas ; and I think he will soon
convince you that his knowledge can be relied upon ;
and I should n't be surprised, if, by the time he gets
through, you are all convinced that American Political
Ideas mean much to the future well-being of mankind,
and that England has had a great deal to do with the
developing or shaping of these ideas. I therefore have
great pleasure in introducing Professor John Fiske of
Cambridge, Massachusetts."
Notwithstanding tlie fact that the Royal Institu-
tion, thirt}^ years ago, would not countenance these
lectures under a title which recognized the phil-
osophy of Evolution as of good standing in the
discussion of philosophico-historic questions, the
lectures are of interest at the present time, not only
because they distinctly recognize the philosophy
of Evolution as governing all history, but more
particularly, because they make clear that the
evolution of the political ideas of the English race,
which has been going on since primitive Aryan
times and is now more active than ever, is mani-
festly tending to the federation of the world in the
interests of industrial peace. In other words, these
lectures are of particular interest now — thirty
years after their delivery, because in them, the
philosophy of Evolution is so distinctly and so
Introduction. xxvii
clearly put back of the Peace movement, the most
important political movement of the present time.
The idea of the international federation so
broadly outlined in these lectures, was ever a grow-
ing thought in Dr. Fiske's mind, and only his un-
timely death prevented his putting in definite form
for publication his more mature thought. My inti-
mate acquaintance with him put me in possession of
much of his later thought, and a conversation I had
with him but a few days before his death, is, con-
sidering the occasion and the subject of conversa-
tion, of particular interest here. Let me say, by
way of premise to this conversation, that in Sep-
tember, 1901, there was held in Winchester, Eng-
land, a millennial celebration in honor of King:
Alfred, and that Dr. Fiske, largely by reason of
these lectures, had been chosen by the English com-
mittee as the most fitting person to speak for Amer-
ica on this memorable occasion, and that he had ac-
cepted the invitation as one of conspicuous honor.
For this occasion he had shaped in his mind an ad-
dress which was to be a sort of supplement to the
present lectures, in that he would present the
tliought that the undoubted evolution of Alfred's
England in the near future would be into a world-
wide federation of English peoples with a " Mani-
fest Destiny " to compel the cessation of warfare
xxviii American Political Ideas.
among civilized nations, and the establishment of
courts of arbitration for the settlement of all in-
ternational difficulties. In the course of his argu-
ment he proposed to touch upon the economico-
political bearing of this federation of the English
peoples upon the two great world questions which
confronted the philosophic thinker at the opening
of the twentieth century : the Balance of Power
in Europe, owing to the rise of Germany ; and the
Eastern Question, owing to the awakening of
China.
Dr. Fiske did not write out this address. That
task he left until he should be aboard ship on his
way to England. He died July 4, 1901. The
world therefore is bereft of what would have been
a masterpiece of philosophico-historic thinking.
I was to accompany Dr. Fiske on this visit to
England, and ten days before his death I dined
with him, and in a conversational way he outlined
to me what he intended to say in his forthcoming
address. I distinctly recall three points in this
conversation in regard to which Dr. Fiske expressed
himself with much earnestness, and points that are
not without interest at the present time. One was
the remarkable prediction of Goethe in 1827 in
regard to the Suez and the Panama Canals ; an-
other was the immense political significance of the
Introduction.
XXIX
possession of the Philippine Islands by the United
States; and the third was the iniquity of all Tariffs
in their bearing upon the federation of the English
peoples in the interest of industrial peace.
Readers of Dr. Fiske's writings know his famil-
iarity with, and his great admiration for the writ-
ings of Goethe. In the course of our conversation
he referred to Goethe's remarkable insight as well
as breadth of thouglit ; and taking down a volume
of " Eckerman's Conversations with Goethe " he
read with much impressiveness the following pas-
sage
"Wednesday, February 21, 1827.
" Dined with Goethe. He spoke much, and with
admiration, of Alexander von Humboldt, whose work on
Cuba and Columbia he had begun to read, and whose
views as to the project of making a passage through the
Isthmus of Panama appeared to have a particular interest
for him. ^ Humboldt,' said Goethe, ' has, with a great
knowledge of his subject, given other points where, by
making use of some streams which flow into the Gulf of
Mexico, the end may be perhaps better attained than at
Panama. All this is reserved for the future, and for an
enterprising spirit. So much, however, is certain, that
if they succeed in cutting such a canal tliat ships of any
burden and size can be navigated tlirougli it from the
Gulf of Mexico to tlie Pacific Ocean, iiinunierable bcne-
iiiA would rcbult tu the whole human race, civilized and
XXX American Political Ideas.
uncivilized. But I should wonder if the United States
were to let an opportunity escape of getting such a work
into their own hands. It may be foreseen that this young
state, with its decided predilection to the West, will, in
thirty or forty years have occupied and peopled the large
tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains. It may,
furthermore, be seen that along the whole coast of the
Pacific Ocean, where nature has already formed the
most capacious and secure harbours, important commer-
cial towns will gradually arise, for the furtherance of a
great intercourse between China and the East Indies
and the United States. In such a case, it would not
only be desirable, but almost necessary, that a more
rapid communication should be maintained between the
eastern and western shores of North America, both by
merchant-ships and men-of-war, than has hitherto been
possible with the tedious, disagreeable, and expensive
voyage around Cape Horn. I therefore repeat, that
it is absolutely indispensable for the United States to
effect a passage from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific
Ocean ; and I am certain that they vrill do it.
" * Would that I might live to see it ! — but I shall
not. I would like to see another thing — a junction of
the Danube and the Rhine. But this undertaking is so
gigantic that I have doubts of its completion, particularly
when I consider our German resources. And thirdly,
and lastly, I should wish to see England in possession of
a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. Would that I
could live to see these three great works ! it would be
Introduction, xxxi
well worth the trouble to last some fifty years more for
the very purpose.'
> >>
Dr. Fiske then said : *' It was an element in
Goethe's greatness, that he was not bound by
national prejudice. Intensely German as he was in
his innermost nature, he could rise above all provin-
ciality in the consideration of world questions.
There has been no better interpreter of Shake-
speare than Goethe ; and in this passage, I seem to
see him sinking all national feeling, and fully re-
cognizing the Manifest Destiny of our English
race." Turning then to his globe Dr. Fiske pointed
out the immense significance of these two canals
— the one held by England and tlie other by the
United States — to the future politics of the world.
*'They truly will be," said he, "in connection
with Gibraltar now held by England, the gateways
of the world for commercial or military purposes ;
and the wonderful prescience of Goethe is shown,
not only in conceiving in 1827 their possibility ; but
also in conceiving them as the legitimate property
of tlie English race."
PVom the considtTation of the strategic import-
ance of these two canals in the possession of the
English race, we passed to the consideration of thi^
United Sbites keeping possession of tlie IMiilippino
xxxii American Political Ideas.
Islands — then a burning political question. On
this subject Dr. Fiske had decided opinions, which
were the outcome of much careful thought. What
he said was substantially as follows :
" I am not, as you know, a believer in special
providences ; nor can I tbink that the annihilation
of the Spanish Fleet in Manila Bay by Admiral
Dewey was purely a chance occurrence. It was the
direct outcome of slowly ripening political antece-
dents. Viewed in its historic connections it marks
the closing stage of a conflict between two antag-
onistic methods of colonization and nation build-
ing, — the English and the Spanish — which since
the 16th century have left their impress for good
or ill on all America and most of the islands of
the Pacific. Out of time, and fairly as an insult
to present civilization, Spain has held Cuba and
the Philippines under a system of colonial vassal-
age born of the time of Philip II. As a self-re-
specting nation we could not stand her impudent
violation of the rights of humanity in dealing with
her subjects at our own doors ; and so we went to
war with her to relieve the Cubans. The fortunes
of war threw the Philippinos — also in insurrection
— wholly unprotected on our hands. One of three
thincjs had to be done : turn the Islands over again
to Spain ; leave them a prey to scheming insur-
Introduction. xxxiii
gents or to the rapacious nations desiring a military
foothold in the East ; or take them under our
protection and educate the people in the principles
of self-government. In my judgment, to have
handed the Philippinos back to Spain would have
been heartless and cruel ; to have left them unpro-
tected would have been cowardly and mean ; what
we did do, was just what was incumbent upon a
strong and an honorable nation to do. We took
them under our protection ; and I believe it is the
purpose of our government, while protecting the
Philippinos, to educate them to the idea and the
practice of self-government. I fail to see that we
are entering upon any career of imperialism in
this line of action ; rather it appears to me that our
government has accepted a great responsibility in
the interests of peace and humanity."
I suggested that this w^as quite a different
view from that of many of our peace-loving friends
in New England, who would have our government
wash its liands of all political connection with the
Philippines ; not only on account of governing dilli-
culties, but also on account of international difli-
culties likely to arise in the near future, from tlio
many complications of the great Eastern question.
To this Dr. Fisko replied : ''Yes, and I too am
a peace man, and 1 have been obliged to disappoint
xxxiv American Political Ideas.
some of my best friends in declining to join the
Anti-Imperialists in their crusade against the gov-
ernment on account of its Philippine policy. There
is nothing in the Anti-Imperialist movement which
commends itself to my judgment. The taking
possession of the Islands by our government was
an act that I think time will approve as in the best
interest of the Philippinos themselves. It is absurd
to suppose that we can have any other policy to-
ward them than that of educating them into the
responsibilities of self-government. We may stum-
ble much in the doing of it, but that is what I
believe our government will endeavor to do in the
best way it can. As a nation we cannot repudiate
our own history.
" The holding of the Islands as a strategic
politico-military position is a wholly different ques-
tion from that of the government of the Islands ;
and it is one that is fraught with immense import
to the future peace of the world. We cannot remain
indifferent if we would to that conflict between
the Oriental and the Occidental civilizations which
has already begun around the China, the Japan,
and the Yellow Seas. Moral and economic, as well
as political issues, of world-wide extent, are in-
volved in this conflict ; and it is not by accident that
Spain, the weakest of Western nations, and possess-
Introduction. xxxv
ing no moral weight whatever, has been completely
ousted from her strong strategic position fairly-
fronting the whole region of conflict, and that this
position should have fallen into the hands of the
United States — a peace-loving nation, and the
strongest nation of the globe.
" Now observe : we have not come to this posi-
tion, nor do we hold it, in the spirit of conquest or
aggression. The position has been fairly thrust
upon us, and we are bound to hold it in the inter-
ests of peace. It is thus that I interpret our re-
cent Eastern policy of * The Open Door.* Further-
more, we may feel assured that with a peaceful
policy in regard to Eastern questions, one based on
justice, we shall have the support of England; and
thus the political ideas of our English race, com-
pounded into a policy which makes for industrial
peace among nations, has become intrenched, as it
were, directly facing the whole Eastern question :
— and with ample power to make good."
I remarked that our manner of treatinf? the
natives in taking possession of the Islands was
marked by many acts of cruelty and oppression. Dr.
Fiske replied : *' True : the first exercise of power
on our part had to be miUtary power. In the
chaotic condition of things sovereignty and order
had first to be established by the military power ;
xxxvi American Political Ideas,
but I have not the slightest doubt that the military
power will be brought in subjection to the civil
power at the earliest practicable moment. Don't
let us be too ready to think that after our centuries
of struggle for civil liberty we are going to prove
false to our ideals — to ourselves — on the first
opportunity that is presented for extending the
blessings we enjoy to others. No, I have faith in
the American people ; and I believe that American
statesmanship will certainly find a way to make
our possession of the Philippines perfectly consist-
ent with our political professions as well as with
our international obligations. And I will go still
further, and say, that it is my conviction, that the
political and military occupancy of the Philippines
by the United States marks a turning-point in the
political history of the whole East; in that our
presence, facing the region of conflict, instead of
inciting to warfare, will be a mighty moral as well
as political influence in behalf of peace, an influence
that will be potent not only among the Eastern
peoples themselves, but also among the Western
nations that would exploit them."
In the course of the conversation I suggested
that the commercial Tariffs of the English peo-
ples outside of Great Britain would long be a
bar to any effective federation between them. Dr.
Introduction. xxxvii
Fiske's response was : " Yes, that is true. These
modern Tariffs are the greatest obstacles to peace
and to federation that exist. The Tariff idea is
one born of selfishness and greed, and to the Evo-
lutionist it connotes a form through which these
barbaric elements of human nature have survived
in modern civilization. In a Democracy a Tariff
has no place save for revenue purposes ; and even
for revenue, a just system of taxation would make
it almost unnecessary. The study of social and po-
litical economy is demonstrating that Tariffs mean
privileges for the few, and that their international
effect is to array nation against nation ; and slowly
the English peoples are becoming convinced that
commercial intercourse between nations means
peace and should be encouraged ; and in my judg-
ment if the Peace movement were directed as
strongly against Tariffs, as it is against armaments,
its force would be doubly increased. Much, how-
ever, as we may deplore present Tariffs, light is
breaking. England witli her policy of Free Trade,
and the United States with its policy of Protection,
furnish good opposing examples for economic
study. I cannot believe that the industrial spec-
tacle this country now presents with its ' pampered
industries ' overriding and defying any just regula-
tion, is long to continue. With the overthrow of
xxxviii American Political Ideas.
our iniquitous Tariff system, an important step
will be taken towards the commercial if not the
political federation of the English peoples ; and
once the idea of international federation is started,
we may expect to see it grow apace." *
These Lectures as an Embodiment of Style
in Literary Art. Important and perdurable as
is the thought embodied in these lectures, the
manner or style in which this thought is presented
is worthy of attentive study. It has been very
highly praised. In a very remarkable degree this
style is fitted to the character of the thought ; and
in this respect the lectures partake of what is note-
worthy in Dr. Fiske's literary work. That all of
his writings are characterized by great opulence of
well-digested thought, fused into a lucid, easy -flow-
ing, very convincing form of literary presentation
♦As, in April 1911, 1 write out this conversation held with
Dr. Fiske in June 1901, England and her colonies are earnestly
discussing plans for an Imperial Parliament for the more
complete federation of the British Empire ; the United States
and Canada are about to establish a system of reciprocity
trade between themselves ; and the whole English world i3
rejoicing over Earl Grey's recent speech in Parliament,
seconding President Taft's suggestion of an arbitration
treaty between England and the United States. Surely the
federation of the English peoples has begun.
Introduction, xxxix
is universally conceded. To analyze this style into
its component parts, for the purpose of accounting
for it as with a chemical or mechanical product, is
impossible. In the last analysis we reach the man
himself — his feelings, his tastes, his imagination,
his moral and philosophic insights, and we can go
no further. His style therefore is himself, the
product of unknown subject-object forces ; and all
we can observe is his manner of using the symbols
of thought expression, to body forth, as it were,
his feelings, his ideas for conveyance to other
minds. When the story of his life appears, it will
be seen that this very effective literary style, while
largely personal in character, yet owes much of its
richness, its attractiveness, and its efficiency, to
three lines of persistent painstaking intellectual
work : an earnest study of the genesis and the
development of the English language ; a critical
study of the masterpieces of classic and modern
literature ; the careful planning or ordering of his
thought to the desired purpose, before attempting \
composition. In considering his style, therefore, •
the attention he paid to these three lines of literary
craftsniansliip should be particularly noted.
Dr. Fiske's knowledge of the genesis and the
evolution of the English language was very thor-
ough. In this particular he has been equaled by
xl American Political Ideas*
but few scholars. It is interesting to note tliat in
his schoolboy days the languages were his favor-
ite studies, and that he took a special delight in
" theming" : that is, in tracing out the origin and
meaning of words in the Greek and Latin lan-
guages; and then in tracing their modifications,
both in structure and meaning, in the modern
English, French, and German languages. This
comparative philological study was an amusement
with him when but jBfteen years old ; and during
his college period, it was continued as a self-im-
posed task, nothing of the kind then being re-
quired in the regular college course at Harvard.
It appears, therefore, that at the time in his
education when most students find the language
studies mere "grinds," he found them subjects of
the deepest interest, so that when he came to his life-
work in literature, he had not only an exceptional
knowledge of the grammatical structure of the
English language, he had also a rare knowledge of
English words : that they were, in fact, to him, bits
of fossilized history, or poetry, or both. His rare
knowledge of English words is further indicated
by the fact that during his college period he had
no English dictionary, that he did not feel the
need of one until he had taken up the study of
the law.
Introduction. xli
Of his familiarity with the masterpieces of all
literature it is hardly necessary to speak, inasmuch
as his own writings so abound with apt quotations
from or references to the master minds of all ages,
as to show that none of the classic literature of the
race had escaped his attention. In fact, if one
were to compile from his writings his quotations
from and his references to other writers, this fact
would stand revealed : that in pure literature the
ancient classics ; with Dante, Shakespeare, Mil-
ton, Bunyan, Cervantes, Voltaire, Goethe, Scott,
Tennyson, Dickens, George Eliot, Matthew Arn-
old, Emerson, and the Bible among the moderns,
were his constant companions. Another point in
this connection : in his literary tastes he was de-
cidedly democratic. While he set much by scholar-
ship, his interests centred around the interests of
the common people. He sought above all things
to know and to be able to speak to the common
mind ; and to this end he held his great scholar-
ship for service.
In regard to planning his literary work it can
be said tliat Dr. Fiske was a tliorough logician,
and that he never undertook any serious literary
task without first carefully planning or ordering
tli(i TuK^ of tliought to tlni desired purpose with
the supporting evidence, before atleu]j)ting com-
xlii Amencan Political Ideas.
position. It is this careful attention to the logical
ordering of his line of thought — of planning
where he was going to come out before entering
upon composition — that gives to his argument
great convincing power, while to his style, his form
of literary presentation, it gives lucidity ; insuring
an easy flow of thought on the part of hearer or
reader.
And these three lectures on " American Political
Ideas " are such a good illustration of Dr. Fiske*s
literary art or style, that they offer, now that we
are in possession of the details of their preparation,
an excellent subject for study from the purely
literary point of view : that is, the manner in which
the essentials of good style were here combined in
the production of a fine piece of literary art.
In reviewing these lectures for this purpose, we
should first consider them from an objective three-
fold point of view : the general theme ; the occasion
and purpose ; the conditions of delivery.
The theme was a great one. It embraced a range
of historic thought, from Aryan tribal legends
through European and American civilizations to an
imaginary condition of the social and political con-
ditions of the world in the remote future. It posited
the existence of ethical and moral feelings in the
human heart, more potent upon conduct than re-
Introduction. xliii
ligious beliefs or social or political enactments —
feelings which are ever evolving higher and higher
types of social and political organizations among
men, thereby steadily increasing the fullness of hu-
man life. Above all it posited, in its underlying
philosophy, an Infinite Unknowable, of whom the
whole Cosmos was but an evolutionary phenomenal
manifestation. The theme, therefore, was of the
highest philosophic and political import, in that the
philosophy of Evolution was not only placed back
of all political development, it was also regarded
as the foundation of the Peace Movement, the most
significant political movement of modem times.
The occasion and purpose of the lectures were be-
fitting the theme. They were to be given under
the auspices of the Royal Institution of Great
Britain, where Dr. Fiske was to be associated as
co-lecturer with tlie most eminent scientists and
thinkers of the time — men like Huxley, Tyndall,
Romanes, and Ernest Renan ; and where he had
for his direct purpose the winning of the assent of
one of the most critical audiences in the world, to
the proposition tliat the cessation of warfare is that
social and political condition of mankind ''to which
the whole creation moves " ; and that it is the mani-
fest destiny of the Einglish race, with its forms of
political organization as developed in England and
xliv American Political Ideas.
the United States, to compel at no distant day the
federation of the world in the interests of indus-
trial peace.
The conditions of delivery were that there should
be three lectures, which necessitated that the theme
should be divided into three parts, with a unity of
thought for each part, coupled with a larger unity
of thought pervading the whole.
So that in the consideration of these lectures as
a piece or example of literary art, we should keep
in mind the fact that the subject or theme needed
to be distinctly thought out and related to the
purpose and conditions of delivery before their
composition was undertaken.
The literary craftsmanship shown by Dr. Fiske
in surmounting these difficulties — in fact, making
these difficulties aids to his purpose — is of the high-
est order and is worth attentive study by every stu-
dent of the art of literature.
The first step. He had, in the first place, to find
some universal, ever active sociologico-political ideas
or principles, whose historic evolution could form
the foundation of his argument. In the midst of
the vastness of universal history, were there any
principles of social and political organization among
men, which could be regarded as vital, perduring,
around which the evolution of the human race from
Introduction, xlv
barbarism to the highest form of civilization might
be said to crystallize as to some ultimate end or
purpose ?
In a mental survey of universal history he found
two sociologico-political principles, whose historic
evolution, and whose application among civilized
communities or states, answered this purpose:
they were the principle of local self-government,
illustrated bv the Anf^lo-American town, with its
method of representative government ; and the prin-
ciple of representative federation, whereby autono-
mous self-governing communities or states, might
unite for purposes of mutual intercourse, and for
protection against external foes, — this latter prin-
ciple being practically illustrated by the Federal
Government of the United States.
In the historic evolution of Local Self-govern-
ment represented by the Town-meeting, and of
Federation represented by the United States, he
found two interrelated topics for his general theme
appropriate for his first two lectures. In tracing
out the historic evolution of these two political
principles, he found that their evolution had been
mainly the work of the English race ; and as they
were cai)able of indefinite extension among peace-
loving communities or nations ; and as the English
race in Europe, America, Australia, Africa, and
xlvi American Political Ideas,
India, held the strategic military and political
gateways of the world, it was apparent, from the
viewpoint of Evolution, that the English peoples, in
their further political development, must become
the protagonists of international federation through-
out the world : accordingly the subject of the third,
the concluding lecture, took shape in his mind as
the " Manifest Destiny " of the English race.
The foregoing was the general line of argument
for these lectures, as it first took shape in Dr.
Fiske's mind. Just the statement of this line of
thought makes the argument appear as a simple
obvious proposition — almost as a matter of course.
It certainly was an argument capable of being
readily comprehended. A moment's reflection,
however, shows that the delimitation of this ar-
gument into a threefold form of presentation,
required not only a profound and well-ordered
knowledge of universal history, but also a wise
philosophy in the interpretation of that knowledge.
The logical simplicity and philosophical compre-
hensiveness shown in this delimitation of the gen-
eral argument should be particularly noted ; for
we have here the foundation for a logical, har-
monious flow of thought through the three lectures
from beginning to end : an absolutely necessary
condition to their possessing " Good Style."
Introduction. xlvii
His next step shows more distinctly still how
much he relied upon good craftsmanship in the or-
dering of his thought as a means for securing a
proper subjective flow of thought. No matter how
great his theme, no matter how well he had it in
mind, he did not believe in trusting to inspirational
feeling for giving clearness and force and effective-
ness to his argument. To the conditions govern-
ing the detailed exposition and presentation of his
thought, he therefore paid much attention. Con-
sider what he had to do. lie had to lay out a line
of thought for each lecture, which, while forming
a unit for a discourse, should yet be presented as
an integral part of the general theme. One of the
well-established rules of rhetoric is, that in every
discourse there should be not only an expansion of
thought from tlie opening to the close ; but also
that it should be clearly apparent that the closing
thought is a logical expansion of the opening
thought. Tlic good sense of this rule is obvious ;
and yet it is a rule so often neglected, that it is
well worth while to critically examine the planning
of each lecture with its opening and closing
tliouglits, for we liave liere an exhibition of lit-
erary craftsmansliip of tlie very liiglicst order,
whether considered from either the rhetorical or
the purely literary point of view.
xlviii American Political Ideas,
In the first lecture the particular subject to be
presented was the Town-meeting — a very simple
matter-of-fact incident in the political life of New
England, yet a subject possessing in its genesis, its
historic evolution, and its relation to the world-
wide politics of the future, considerations of the
very first importance. With so broad a subject,
and with so limited an opportunity for its presen-
tation, it was essential that the line of thought
should be clearly delimited and held in logical
order, while unfolding to some definite end. Ac-
cordingly the lecture was planned to open with a
focussing of thought upon a New England Town
with its Town-meeting ; the thought then to ex-
pand through tracing the genesis of this simple
political device among the Aryans and its historic
evolution through advancing civilization, — espe-
cially in England and her colonies, — until in the
middle of the eighteenth century it became an im-
portant factor at the great political and military
turning-point in modern history — Wolfe's victory
at Quebec. Observe that it was here distinctly
planned to hold the line of thought between two
concrete, logically related historic facts, while
tracing out the historic evolution and political
significance of the subject of thought — the Town-
meeting.
Introduction. xlix
The second lecture was no less skillfully planned.
The subject was the Federal Union of the United
States; its historical evolution and its establish-
ment as one of the regenerative forces of the ruod-
ern world. For the opening thought there was
selected that great period of Athenian culture and
statesmanship which followed the victory of Mar-
athon, and its untimely end through the imper-
fect idea of Federation then prevailing among the
cities of ancient Greece. From the contemplation
of the imperfect idea of Federation in ancient
Greece at the period of its highest civilization with
the dire results that followed, the line of thought
was to expand into the consideration of the various
ideas of Federation as developed in the ancient,
the medipeval, and the modern world, culminating
in the establishing of the Federal Union of the
United States as a product of constructive states-
manship, the like of which the world never saw
before ; and as holding within itself untold possi-
bilities for the political regeneration of mankind.
Here again observe the connection between the
opening and the closing thought, the inherent
weakness of Athens in the midst of her intellec-
tual greatness, because of her defective militant
political organization ; the inherent strength and
dominating inlluence of the United States in world
1 American Political Ideas.
affairs, because of its potent pacific political or-
ganization. And observe further, that this bring-
ing of the results of the highest culture, and the
ripest political wisdom of the ancient world, into
direct contrast with the practical statesmanship
of our own time, was for the purpose not only
of effectively showing the evolution of the two
fundamental principles of political organization
— Local Self-government and Federation — but
also for the purpose of bringing more effectively
into the general argument, the recognition of the
element of ethico-moral feeling — that is, the pa-
cific element — as underlying all political evolu-
tion, and as destined to become a dominating in-
fluence in the political organizations of the future.
The planning of the third and closing lecture
shows the skillful craftsmanship of a master of
rhetorical and literary art. The whole argument
was now to be carried to the conclusion which
was prefigured in the first conception of the gen-
eral line of thought, — in the original point of
view, — the Federation of the World in the inter-
ests of Industrial Peace. The closing thought
being thus determined by the general theme, what
should be the opening thought in a discourse lead-
ing to such a grand conclusion ? Observe that the
line of thought was to be shifted, from its bearing
Introduction. li
particularly upon England and the United States,
to its bearing upon the political interests of the
world at large. To this end Dr. Fiske thought it
desirable to give a little relief to the intellectual
strain of the first two lectures, preparatory to the
focussing of attention in a different direction:
upon the immense political considerations about
to be brought forward in regard to the " Manifest
Destiny" of the Anglo-American peoples. Ac-
cordingly, as a sort of rhetorical relief, — perhaps
it would be better to say, for rhetorical shading,
— an example of American political humor, the
story of a Paris dinner-party, was selected for the
opening thought of this lecture. Only a speaker
confident of himself, confident of the good sense
of his audience, and above all with confidence in
the moral weight of his argument, would have
ventured upon opening the closing lecture of such
a theme with a bit of American political hyper-
bole.i
Following such an opening, he then planned to
bring out through a rapid survey of historic evo-
1 When the lecture was finished, Dr. Fiske read it to Mrs.
Fiske. She questioned whether the English audience would
take this story in the right spirit. Dr. Fiske replied, " They
certainly will. John Bull will take this story as one of the
best things in the lectures." And he did.
lii American Political Ideas.
lution in general, the following points : that the
true meaning of civilization is the ultimate cessa-
tion of warfare through the formation of ever-
increasing peaceful political aggregates, with local
self-government in the parts ; that the Anglo-
American peoples have been, and are, the protag-
onists of the political ideas necessary for the for-
mation of such political aggregates ; that they
already hold the strategic military and political
gateways of the globe, and are destined ultimately
to compel, through the free play of economic and
moral forces, the political regeneration of man-
kind.
Thus, the whole scheme of the lectures was defi-
nitely planned at the beginning. The Table of
Contents of the lectures, as printed in this volume,
is substantially this detailed plan, which was
worked out by Dr. Fiske, in the manner here in-
dicated, several months before he put pen to paper
in the composition of the lectures. It is to this
clear logical ordering of the line of thought before-
hand that much of the lucid flow of thought, one
of the fine characteristics of the style of the lec-
tures, is due.
With this account of the careful ordering of the
line of thought for these lectures previous to at-
tempting their composition, I wish, before passing
Introduction. liii
to the consideration of their style, — that is, their
complete literary form, — to call attention to the
character, the high quality of the thought which is
outlined in this general plan, as observable in the
Table of Contents in this volume.
Speaking psychologically, we know that all
thought is the product of unknown subject-object
forces fused in the human mind into feeling ; which
through experience is developed into two orders of
mental action : intellectual cognition ; emotive sen-
sibility. While these two orders of mental action
are more or less interrelated in the process of think-
ing, the subject-object forces of feeling are very
differently compounded in the two orders of men-
tal action. In intellectual cognition, the subject-
ive forces predominate, yielding a rational self-
centered order of thinking embodied in ideas ; in
emotive sensibility, the objective forces predomi-
nate, yielding an irregular order of thinking char-
acterized by undue manifestation of the emotions.
A consistent, well-ordered line of thought is one in
which the two orders of mental action have been
harmoniously interrelated by a rational mind, yield-
ing subjective mental power manifested in ideas
which are given character and individuality largely
through their emotive quality.
In the plan of these lectures the blending of
liv American Political Ideas.
these two orders of mental action is clearly appar-
ent. In the general shaping of the argument, the
line of thought, while consisting largely of ideas
for appeal to the intellect, is yet colored by a high
quality of emotive feeling for appeals to the sensi-
bilities. Indeed, one cannot study this carefully
thought-out plan without being impressed by the
conviction that, while the argument is based upon
a profound philosophy of human history embodied
in ideas, it is permeated by a high quality of emot-
ive feeling manifested in the underlying concep-
tion of a moral government of the world ; from
which it follows, that human history is but the
evolutionary unfolding, through ever increasing
ideals of ethical conduct among men, of the pur-
poses of an Infinite Moral Evolver.
Such being the character of the line of thought
in the general argument, it is evident that its ef-
fective presentation to other minds must take the
nature of an appeal to the intelligence and the
sensibilities of hearer or reader through the pre-
sentation in proper literary form of the ideas and
the high ethical and moral feeling embodied in the
argument.
In proper literary form. This is most essential.
Otherwise, the scheme of thought no matter how
wisely planned or logically arranged, may utterly
Introduction, Iv
fail of its purpose : the verbal symbols may be un-
wisely chosen ; they may be faulty or confusing in
their syntactical and grammatical arrangement ;
and thus we are brought to the recognition of the
fact that there is an art of literary form, — that
the expression or presentation of a fine thought in
fitting verbal symbols, for conveyance to another,
is a fine art, and is the essence of " Good Style."
Of rules or laws governing the art of literary
form, there are many, and they partake of the
intellectual idiosyncrasies of their propounders.
Spencer, regarding style from the philosophic view-
point, would find the laws governing it in Economy,
that is, " in so presenting ideas that they be appre-
hended with the least possible mental effort " ;
Stevenson, most delightful of literary artists, finds
" that style the most perfect which attains the
highest degree of elegant and pregnant implica-
tion unobtrusively " ; and Pater, suggesting a fine
quality in his own style, speaks of the necessity of
a writer's possessing a "vocabulary faithful to the
coloring of his own spirit." Mr. Lewes, one of the
most competent as well as one of the most sensible
of literary critics, sums the matter up in five laws
under which he would group all the mechanical
conditions governing literary style, — laws to which
all good writing conforms, and which bad writing
Ivi American Political Ideas,
violates, — and they have the merit of being based
on psychological considerations. These laws are :
(1) the Law of Economy, the power of communi-
cating distinct thoughts and emotional suggestions
in the most effective manner with the least dis-
play of force ; (2) the Law of Simplicity, absence
of unnecessary detail ; (3) the Law of Sequence,
the arrangement of phrases in the order of logical
dependence and rhythmical cadence ; (4) the Law
of Climax, every passage to have a progressive se-
quence; (5) the Law of Variety, avoidance of
monotony.
If it were the purpose to give an exhaustive crit-
icism of Dr. Fiske's style, with the idea of bring-
ing out all its fine qualities, much might be said
in regard to the manner in which the good sense
of these laws finds illustrations in these lectures;
in fact, the effect of an observance of these laws is
more or less in evidence on every page — espe-
cially shown in the syntactical composition of the
sentences, where the happy alternation of the loose
and the periodic form of sentence, serves to give
great variety in the rhythmical flow of the lan-
guage. But what I more particularly wish to call
attention to, along with the fine character of the
thought and its orderly arrangement for a purpose,
is Dr. Fiske's use of denotation and connotation in
Introduction. Ivii
the expression and the conveyance of his ideas to
others with clearness, with beauty, with power.
It is in these respects that he appears as a great
master of style.
Denotation and connotation, when properly
blended, are such supreme factors in literary art,
that it is somewhat surprising to find them so in-
differently regarded by many critics of style. Per-
haps this may be owing to a limited knowledge of
psychology on the part of such critics, whereby
they fail to appreciate the subtile relationships
between the intellectual and emotive orders of
mental action, and the service of the imagination
in conveying ideas from mind to mind through
the verbal symbols of thought exchange. Certain
it is, that when we come to the study of literary
style in its psychological aspects, — that is, as
possessing both subjective and objective qualities,
— we find that a style is measured for its lucidity,
its beauty, its power, mainly by its denotative and
connotative character. And just what is meant
by denotation and connotation in literary art?
For clearness in defining these terms, I cannot do
better than to quote from Professor Arlo Bates,
one of our best literary critics, who very happily
exemplifies in his own literary work the principles
of good literary form lie lays down for others.
Iviii American Political Ideas,
Speaking of denotation and connotation Professor
Bates says : —
" A word denotes what it expresses directly : it con-
notes what it expresses indirectly ; it denotes the idea
which it names, and connotes the idea that it implies ; it
denotes what it says, and connotes what it suggests.
The word ' Washington ' denotes a particular man, whose
history we know, but with that history go so many sug-
gestions and associations that the name connotes the
idea of patriotism, military skill, and devotion to the
nation from the very hour of its birth. The word ' trea-
son ' denotes a specific offense against the government ;
while it connotes all the shame with which men regard
one who betrays his country. In the familiar line of
Wordsworth,
A violet by a mossy stone,
the words denote a certain common flower beside a stone
covered with another common and ordinary vegetable
growth ; they connote all the beauty of the azure blos-
som, the sweetness of the springtide, the quietude of a
sylvan scene, all those lovely and touching associations
which can be expressed only by suggestion. It is in the
fact that certain sentiments can be conveyed by indirect
means only that the value of connotation lies. To sug-
gest by the choice of words those subtle ideas which are
like a fragrance or like the iridescent sheen of nacre is
one of the highest triumphs of literary art ; and the nice
artist in words is certainly not less careful in regard to
Introduction. lix
the connotation of words than he is of their denota-
tion.*
And in defining force in literary composition,
Professor Bates still farther remarks on the signi-
ficance of connotation : —
" The thing which the writer has caused the reader to
think — or even to suppose himself to think — is sure to
interest him. The dullest of bores is absorbed in his
own words, and in effect that which the reader receives
by suggestion is his own thought. What is denoted is
the word of the writer ; what is connoted is for the time
beino: the thousfht of the reader. . . .
'* Connotation may be the result of various causes. It
may be produced by a swiftness and briskness of motion
which so awakens and quickens the mind that the reader is
aroused to thought, and seizes each idea presented as if
he liad himself originated it. It is this sort of force that
we mean when we speak of the vivacity or the brilliancy
of a work. The secret lies chiefly in passing quickly
from one significant point to another. This involves, it
is apparent, the power of selecting the significant, and
of bringing this out while avoiding the unessential."
Thus it appears that denotation and connotation
serve a twofold purpose in the communication of
thought or ideas from mind to mind, in that they
♦ Talks on Writing English. First Series. By Arlo Bates,
p. 45.
Ix American Political Ideas.
relate, the one to the verbal symbols which a
speaker or writer selects for the expression of his
own thought ; and the other to the effective use
or arrangement of these symbols for the purpose
of inciting corresponding thoughts or ideas in the
minds of hearers or readers. Hence it is that de-
notation and connotation are the supreme factors
in the art of literature — in " Good Style."
Dr. Fiske thoroughly understood the nature and
significance of denotation and connotation in the
art of literature ; and as I am about to call atten-
tion to some examples of their very effective use in
these lectures, a brief reference to his early ac-
quaintance with their significance in the use of
language is of interest. I have already referred
to his early philological studies. Along with these
studies he carried on philosophical inquiries in
various directions, paying particular attention to
psychology and logic. At this period, John Stuart
Mill's " System of Logic " was a familiar text-
book with him on the art of thinking ; and he was
particularly impressed by the significance of Mr.
Mill's analysis of the names of things into denota-
tive and connotative words, " as one of the most
important distinctions, and one which goes deep-
est into the nature of language." He also gave
close attention to Mr. Mill's subtile and very con-
Introduction, lid
elusive analysis of the definition or meaning of
denotative and connotative words. It is not ne-
cessary to enter into Mr. Mill's subtile and elabo-
rate analyses on these points. For the present
purpose it is sufficient to point out that, at the
beginning of his literary career, Dr. Fiske pos-
sessed a thorough understanding of the nature and
significance of denotation and connotation in the
use of verbal symbols for conveying thought or
ideas from mind to mind.
To bring this analysis to a close. Style in lit-
erature may be succinctly defined as the manner
of expressing subjective thought and feeling in an
appeal to the intellect and to the sensibilities of
others. To the intellect the appeal must be
through the presentation of ideas : to the sensi-
bilities it must be through the excitation of the
emotions. In the presentation of high moral and
spiritual truths both forms of appeal may be
blended ; and then, when there is back of the
appeal wide knowledge, deep philosophic insight,
sincerity of conviction as to the moral government
of the universe, combined with a denotative and
a connotative command of the verbal symbols of
thought expression and presentation, we have the
conditions for a noble and a distinctive style. It
is out of such conditions that we have in English
Ixii American Political Ideas,
literature the styles of Shakespeare, of Milton,
of Gibbon, of Burke, of Maucaulay, of Newman, of
Ruskin, of Emerson, of Lincoln.
Style, therefore, in its last analysis partakes of
the intrinsic character of all thought : it is sub-
ject-object in its nature. It is subjective as ex-
pressing the thought and the feeling of the speaker
or writer: it is objective as appealing to the
thought and the feeling of the hearer or reader.
It is measured as to its ultimate character by its
fulfillment of these two requirements.
After this roundabout consideration of the plan
of these lectures and how it was worked out, —
and after this digression into the nature of style
in literary art, — we come at last to the consider-
ation of the style of these lectures, — the subject
of all this roundabout discussion ; and the question
very naturally arises : Have we in the finished lec-
tures a style worthy of so much attention ?
A very slight examination of the lectures as a
completed whole, reveals the fact that they pre-
sent an argument or line of thought of the very
highest philosophic character, in an appeal to the
intellect through ideas, coupled with appeals to
the sensibilities ; which, charged with emotive
feeling, serve greatly to heighten the appeal to the
intellect. It also appears that this line of thought
Introduction, Ixiii
is enriched with wide and varied knowledge, is
pervaded by a high ethical and moral tone, and
flows with great simplicity, clearness, and logical
expansion from the opening to the close of the lec-
tures. The question then resolves itself into this :
Has this very high order of thought been given
adequate expression and presentation in the forms
of literary art ?
Let us see.
Take the first seven paragraphs of the opening
lecture and note the fine art that is here. Con-
sider the overruling condition, — that with the
presentation of the opening thought the respect-
ful attention of the audience must be gained ; then
observe the simple yet effective way by which in
the first paragraph the thought of his hearers is
led out from themselves, from the Old England
that they knew full well, to the New England of
which they had but indifferent knowledge and
with which it was desired they should be better
acquainted. Then note how in the six succeeding
paragraphs, there is briefly sketched the best as-
pects of the social and political life of rural New
England. The reader, as he critically examines
the language, finds that in its syntactical and
grammatical arrangement it is admirably fitted to
the theme and the occasion ; and he is at no loss
Ixiv American Political Ideas.
to understand why, after fifteen minutes speaking,
after such a simple yet direct appeal to the intel-
ligence and the finer sensibilities of the audience,
their good will should have been completely gained.
With passages, in which appeal is made to the
intellect through ideas rendered in fine syntactical
and grammatical form, the lectures abound. In
such appeals clearness and effectiveness are al-
most wholly dependent upon the judicious use of
denotation and connotation. As an illustration
I take at random, the following passage from
page 46 : —
" The prodigious superiority — in respect to national
vitality — of a freely governed country over one that is
governed by a centralized despotism, is nowhere more
brilliantly illustrated than in the contrasted fortunes of
France and England as colonizing nations. When we
consider the declared rivalry between France and Eng-
land in their plans for colonizing the barbarous regions
of the earth, when we consider that the military power
of the two countries has not been far from equal, and
that France has at times shown herself a maritime power
by no means to be despised, it seems to me that her
overwhelming and irretrievable defeat by England in the
struggle for colonial empire is one of the most striking
and one of the most instructive facts in all modern his-
tory."
Introduction. Ixv
Observe that we have here an appeal to the in-
tellect through ideas : that with two denotative
statements the mind is focussed upon England as
a freely governed country and upon France as a
centralized despotism, and is then lifted through
the use of connotative words into the contempla-
tion of some of the most historic events of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And all in
two sentences of fine syntactical form.
Again, take this sentence from page 95 : —
" To be a citizen of a great and growing state, or to
belong to one of the dominant races of the world, is no
doubt a legitimate source of patriotic pride, though there
is perhaps an equal justification for such a feehng in
being a citizen of a tiny state like Holland, which, in
spite of its small dimensions, has nevertheless achieved
so much — fighting at one time the battle of freedom for
the world, producing statesmen like William and Barne-
reldt, generals hke Maurice, scholars like Erasmus and
Grotius, and thinkers like Spinoza, and taking the lead
even to-day in the study of Christianity and in the inter-
pretation of the Bible."
And this passage from page 115 : —
" It never became necessary for the English Govern-
ment to keep up a great standing army. For purposes
of external defence a navy was all-sufficient ; and there
is this practical difference between a permanent army
Ixvi American Political Ideas.
and a permanent navy. Both are originally designed for
purposes of external defence ; but the one can readily be
used for purposes of internal oppression, and the other
cannot. Nobody ever heard of a navy putting up an
empire at auction and knocking down the throne of the
world to a Didius Julianus."
Observe that along with the simplicity, the
clearness and force of the language in these pas-
sages, there is distinctly generated the idea of re-
served force, that much remains behind ; that what
has been denoted and connoted is something quite
in the way of, and incidental to, the main line of
thought. To generate the idea of reserved force,
the feeling that the speaker or writer is not ex-
hausting himself, is simply taking the evidence in
support of his proposition which is close at hand
and most obvious, is the surest way of gaining the
confidence and good will of the hearer or reader —
is in itself an evidence of good style. Now, as a
sustained example of reserved force, we might
take, not simply the passages I have quoted, but
the lectures as a whole. No thoughtful person
can read these lectures now, thirty years after
their delivery, without being impressed with the
immensity — I use the word deliberately — of their
reserved force.
But the supreme test of good style in literary
Introduction. Ixvii
art is Elegance, the most elusive of terms for
definition. It may be defined as the harmonious
summation of all the elements essential to good
style. Certain it is, there must be a worthy
theme, one based on a rational philosophy, on a
view of nature and human life as the ever active
unfolding of some ultimate beneficent purpose.
This philosophy will prompt to a cheerful optimis-
tic moral feeling in regard to all subjects or
things ; and when with this optimistic feeling
there is coupled wide knowledge, and keen sesthetic
sensibility, combined with a full command of the
denotative and connotative forces of language, we
have the conditions for Elegance of style.
And have we in these lectures passages that
answer to this definition of Elegance ? There are
many.
I have referred to the style of the first seven
paragraphs of the first lecture as admirably fitted
to the theme and the occasion. A further criti-
cal examination of these paragraphs shows that
English literature contains no finer, more appreci-
ative presentation of all that is best in Puritan
civilization than is given here ; while the rhythmi-
cal flow of the language gives to the style of the
paragraphs the charm of simple Elegance.
Take next the following passage from page 114,
Ixviii American Political Ideas.
where we have an appeal to the intellect and the
sensibilities made specially forceful through the
effective application of the principles of denotation
and connotation : —
" Nor can we forget with what longing eyes the Cor-
sican Barbarian, who wielded for mischief the forces of
France in 1805, looked across from Boulogne at the
shores of the one European land that never in word or
deed granted him homage. But in these latter days
England has had no need of stormy weather to aid the
prowess of the sea-kings who are her natural defenders.
It is impossible for the thoughtful student of history to
walk across Trafalgar Square, and gaze on the image of
the mightiest naval hero that ever lived, on the summit
of his lofty column and guarded by the royal lions, look-
ing down towards the government-house of the land that
he freed from the dread of Napoleonic invasion, and
towards that ancient church wherein the most sacred
memories of English talent and English toil are clustered
together — it is impossible, I say, to look at this, and not
admire both the artistic instinct that devised so happy a
symbolism, and the rare good fortune of our Teutonic
ancestors in securing a territorial position so readily
defensible against the assault of despotic powers."
Consider for a moment what is suggested to the
imagination in this brief passage! The whole
Napoleonic struggle with its character "for mis-
Introduction. Ixix
chief" is denoted and connoted by the "Corsican
Barbarian " ; England's naval glories are denoted
and connoted by the reference to the Nelson Monu-
ment in Trafalgar Square ; while most of what is
memorable in English history is denoted and con-
noted by the references to the Houses of Parlia-
ment and to Westminster Abbey. And particu-
larly note the fine poetic character of the last two
references — the one as "the government house,"
and the other as " that ancient church." Substi-
tute for these historic buildings any other appella-
tions, and see how prosaic the phrase becomes —
that its poetic character largely vanishes. I re-
call no other passage of equal length in English
literature, where so much of the true greatness of
England is suggested to the imagination and in as
fine literary form as in this. Certainly this pas-
sage is a good example of elegant style.
And we have in these lectures another particu-
larly fine example of elegant style, an example
where, in an appeal to the intellect mingled with
an appeal to the sensibilities, there is also con-
veyed the evidences of a cultured mind express-
ing itself under a sense of deep personal feeling.
It is the first paragraph of the second lecture, where
a denotative reference is made to Thukydides' his-
tory of the great period of Athenian culture and
Ixx American Political Ideas.
statesmansliip whicli followed the victory of Mara-
thon. I have already referred to the high quality
of thought invoked for the opening of this lecture,
"when considering its plan. The paragraph in
which this opening thought is presented is worth
the study of every student of style. I give the
paragraph entire : —
*' The great history of Thukydides, which after twenty-
three centuries still ranks (in spite of Mr. Cobden) among
our chief text-books of political wisdom, has often seemed
to me one of the most mournful books in the world. At
no other spot on the earth's surface, and at no other time
in the career of mankind, has the human intellect flowered
with such luxuriance as at Athens during the eighty-five
years which intervened between the victory of Marathon
and the defeat of -^gospotamos. In no other Uke inter-
val of time, and in no other community of like dimen-
sions, has so much work been accomplished of which we
can say with truth that it is KT^fxa es act, — an eternal
possession. It is impossible to conceive of a day so dis-
tant, or an era of culture so exalted, that the lessons
taught by Athens shall cease to be of value, or that the
writings of her great thinkers shall cease to be read
with fresh profit and delight. We understand these
things far better to-day than did those monsters of eru-
dition in the sixteenth century who studied the classics
for philological purposes mainly. Indeed, the older the
world grows, the more varied our experience of practical
Introduction, Ixxi
politics, the more comprehensive our survey of universal
history, the stronger our grasp upon the comparative
method of inquiry, the more brilliant is the light thrown
upon that brief day of Athenian greatness, and the more
wonderful and admirable does it all seem. To see this
glorious community overthrown, shorn of half its virtue
(to use the Homeric phrase), and thrust down to an in-
ferior position in the world, is a mournful spectacle in-
deed. And the book which sets before us, so impartially
yet so eloquently, the innumerable petty misunderstand-
ings and contemptible jealousies which brought about this
direful result, is one of the most mournful of books."
I have heard Dr. Fiske give this lecture several
times, and I always had occasion to note the deep
impression this paragraph made upon the audience.
It was read in the simplest manner possible, with-
out the slightest effort at rhetorical effect ; yet the
first sentence seemed to gain the full attention of
the audience ; and this attention was held at com-
plete focus, until in those sentences so full of sub-
jective feeling and of rhythmical beauty, and in
which is connoted much of what is finest in human
civilization, he had told why Thukydides' immortal
history is one of the most mournful of books. And
the reader finds a beauty, a charm in the rhythm-
ical flow of the language, in this paragraph, no less
than the hearer — in fact it is a passage over which
Ixxii American Political Ideas.
the scholar, the historian, the literary critic may
well linger : it deserves a place among the finest
examples of English prose.
One illustration more : the last paragraph of the
closing lecture, where the argument is brought to
its conclusion. It is not necessary to repeat this
paragraph here. Considered by itself, its fine ar-
tistic significance is not apparent. The language
is so simple, and it flows in such well-modulated
sentences, that the hearer or reader is hardly con-
scious in the easy flow of thought of any literary
form whatever. If conscious of anything, he is
conscious only of this, that a conclusion, apparently
his own conclusion, is focussing itself in his mind
— the highest effect of literary art. When I first
came to the critical consideration of this paragraph,
it took some thought to gather its full artistic signi-
ficance, to see where its power lay. That it was
fitted to its purpose, that it was a fitting climax
to a great argument, had been affirmed by the uni-
versal judgment alike of hearers and readers of the
argument. Whence this conclusion ? Observe
that there is no preaching to the hearer or reader :
rather his reasoning imagination is appealed to for
the confirmation needed. In my own case, only
when I raised my eye from the mere verbal sym-
bols of the paragraph, and took in through the
Introduction, Ixxiii
imagination the import of their fine syntactical de-
notation and connotation, did I realize the great
force of their simplicity ; that through them was sug-
gested all the elements of modern civilization at their
best, thereby rousing the intellectual and emotive
activities of the mind to the highest, in the sub-
lime conception of a humanity, endowed with ethi-
cal and moral feeling, beset by ignorance and error,
yet irresistibly developing under the guidance of
an Infinite Unknowable to a social and political
condition of the future, represented by " a world
covered by cheerful homesteads and blessed by a
Sabbath of perpetual peace."
And thus, we have in these lectures, under the
denotative title of " American Political Ideas," a
line of thought, which, opening with a delightful
sketch of a rural New England town like Peters-
ham, Massachusetts, expands therefrom into the
consideration of the profoundest teachings of his-
tory in the light of the philosophy of Evolution ;
and finds its culmination in the contemplation
" of a Parliament of Man in the Federation of the
World " as the political condition of the future.
And the style of the lectures, in its simplicity,
its clearness, its beauty, its power, is admirably
fitted to the theme.
Ixxiv American Political Ideas,
"The Story of a New England Town," in-
eluded in this volume, is an address delivered
by Dr. Fiske at Middletown, Connecticut, October
10, 1900, on the occasion of the town's celebrating
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its set-
tlement.
The boyhood and the youth of Dr. Fiske were
spent in Middletown at the home of his grand-
parents. The Fiske family — sometimes speUing
the surname with an " e " and sometimes without
— had been residents of the town for some one
hundred and fifty years, three members of the
family during this period having held successively
the ofiice of Town Clerk. John Fisk, the great-
grandfather of Dr. Fiske, died in 1847. He was
the last of the Fiske Town Clerks. He had held
the office for fifty years ; and at the time of his
death he also held the offices of Town Treasurer,
City Clerk and Treasurer, Clerk of the Superior
Court, County Treasurer, and Clerk of Probate.
It was by reason of Dr. Fiske's personal and fam-
ily identification with the town, as well as his
eminent fitness for the service, that he was chosen
to deliver the anniversary address.
In this, as in all his public addresses. Dr. Fiske
had something to say of public interest. In his
mind no historic event was ever isolated, ever
Introduction, Ixxv
stood out by itself unrelated to other historic phe-
nomena. And the colonial history of Connecticut,
particularly the region round about Middletown,
was of special interest to him, by reason of the
fact that in the political experience of the colonial
towns of Connecticut, the idea of Federation in
America, which found its culmination in the Fed-
eral Constitution of the United States, had its birth.
As a goodly portion of this address is given to
setting-forth the experiences of these Connecticut
folk in establishing their form of civil government,
out of which the device of representative Federation
grew as a natural product, the address has a fitting
place in Dr. Fiske's collected works beside the lec-
tures, wherein, twenty years before, he had, under
the auspices of the Royal Institution of Great
Britain, so convincingly shown that political fed-
eration among autonomous peace-loving communi-
ties or states is a fundamental political principle
of the Anglo-American peoples, and that it is the
" Manifest Destiny " of these peoples to ultimately
compel the cessation of warfare and the adoption
of Federation among the nations of the earth.
And this address is marked by all those fine
qualities of style, so characteristic of the earlier
lectures, to which I have called attention.
Juno, 1911.
AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS
VIEWED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF
UNIVERSAL HISTORY
THREE LECTURES
DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL mSTITUTION
OF GREAT BRITAIN IN MAY, 1880
Voici un fait mtilremtnt nouveau dans le monde, et dont V imagination
tile-meme ne sauraii saisir la portie. Tocqcbvillb.
PREFACE.
IiT the spring of 1879 I gave at the Old South
Meeting-house in Boston a course of lectures on
the discovery and colonization of America, and
presently, through the kindness of my friend Pro-
fessor Huxley, the course was repeated at Univer-
sity College in London. The lectures there were
attended by very large audiences, and awakened
such an interest in American history that I was in-
vited to return to England in the following year
and treat of some of the philosophical aspects of
my subject in a course of lectures at the Royal
Institution.
In the three lectures which were written in re-
sponse to this invitation, and which are now pub-
lished in this little volume, I have endeavoured to
illustrate some of the fundamental ideas of Amer-
ican politics by setting forth their relations to the
general history of mankind. It is impossible thor-
4 Preface.
oughly to grasp the meaning of any group of facts,
in any department of study, until we have duly
comjiared them with allied groups of facts ; and
the political history of the American people can be
rightly understood only when it is studied in con-
nection with that general process of political evolu-
tion which has been going on from the earliest times,
and of which it is itself one of the most important
and remarkable phases. The government of the
United States is not the result of special creation,
but of evolution. As the town-meetings of New
England are lineally descended from the village
assemblies of the early Aryans ; as our huge federal
union was long ago foreshadowed in the little leagues
of Greek cities and Swiss cantons ; so the great po-
litical problem which we are (thus far successfully)
solving is the very same problem upon which all
civilized peoples have been working ever since civil-
ization began. How to insure peaceful concerted
action throughout the Whole, without infringing
upon local and individual freedom in the Parts, —
this has ever been the chief aim of civilization,
viewed on its political side ; and we rate the failure
or success of nations politically according to their
failure or success in attaining this supreme end.
Preface. 5
When thus considered in the light of the compara-
tive method, our American history acquires added
dignity and interest, and a broad and rational basis
is secured for the detailed treatment of political
questions.
When viewed in this light, moreover, not only
does American history become especially interest-
ing to Englishmen, but English history is clothed
with fresh interest for Americans. Mr. Freeman
has done well in insisting upon the fact that the
history of the English people does not begin with
the Norman Conquest. In the deepest and widest
sense, our American history does not begin with
the Declaration of Independence, or even with the
settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth ; but it
descends in unbroken continuity from the days
when stout Arminius in the forests of northern
Germany successfully defied the might of imperial
Rome. In a more restricted sense, the statesman-
ship of Washington and Lincoln appears in the
noblest light when regarded as the fruition of the
various work of De Montfort and Cromwell and
Chatham. The good fight begun at Lewes and
continued at Naseby and Quebec was fitly crowned
at Yorklown and at Appomattox. When we duly
g Preface.
realize this, and further come to see how the two
great branches of the English race have the common
mission of establishing throughout the larger part
of the earth a higher civilization and more permanent
political order than any that has gone before, we
shall the better understand the true significance of
the history which English - speaking men have so
magnificently wrought out upon American soil.
In dealing concisely with a subject so vast, only
brief hints and suggestions can be expected ; and
I have not thought it worth while, for the present
at least, to change or amplify the manner of treat-
ment. The lectures are printed exactly as they
were delivered at the Royal Institution, more than
four years ago.
In describing some of the characteristic features
of country life in New England, I had especially
in mind the beautiful mountain village in which
this preface is written, and in which for nearly a
quarter of a century I have felt myself more at
home than in any other spot in the world.
In writing these lectures, designed as they were
for a special occasion, no attempt was made to
meet the ordinary requirements of popular audi-
ences ; yet they have been received in many places
Preface. 7
with unlooked-for favour. The lecture on " Mani-
fest Destiny " was three times repeated in London,
and once in Edinburgh ; seven times in Boston ;
four times in New York ; twice in Brooklyn, N. Y.,
Plainfield, N. J., and Madison, Wis. ; once in Wash-
ington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland,
Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Milwaukee ;
in Appleton and Waukesha, Wis. ; Portland, Lewis-
ton, and Brunswick, Me.; Lowell, Concord, New-
buryport, Peabody, Stoneham, Maiden, Newton
Highlands, and Martha's Vineyard, Mass. ; Middle-
town and Stamford, Conn.; Newburg and Pough-
keepsie, N. Y. ; Orange, N. J. ; and at Cornell Uni-
versity and Haverford College. Li several of these
places the course was given.
Petkbsham, Septemb^ 13, 1884.
AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS.
I.
TEE TOWN- MEETING.
The traveller from the Old "World, who has a
few weeks at his disposal for a visit to the Unit-
ed States, usually passes straight from one to
another of our principal cities, such as Boston,
New York, "Washington, or Chicago, stopping for
a day or two perhaps at Niagara Falls, — or, per-
haps, after traversing a distance like that which
separates England from Mesopotamia, reaches the
vast table -lands of the Far West and inspects
their interesting fauna of antelopes and buffaloes,
red Indians and Mormons. In a journey of this
sort one gets a very superficial view of the pe-
culiarities, physical and social, which characterize
the different portions of our country ; and iu
this there is nothing to complain of, since the
knowledge gained in a vacation - journey cannot
well be expected to be thorough or profound.
10 American Political Ideas.
The traveller, however, who should visit the Unit-
ed States in a more leisurely way, with the pur-
pose of increasing his knowledge of history and
politics, would find it well to proceed somewhat
differently. He would find himself richly repaid
for a sojourn in some insignificant place the very
name of which is unknown beyond sea, — just as
Mr. Mackenzie Wallace — whose book on Russia
is a model of what such books should be — got so
much invaluable experience from his months of
voluntary exile at Ivanofka in the province of
Novgorod. Out of the innumerable places which
one might visit in America, there are none which
would better reward such careful observation, or
which are more full of interest for the compara-
tive historian, than the rural towns and mountain
villages of New England; that part of English
America which is oldest in civilization (though
not in actual date of settlement), and which, while
most completely English in blood and in tradi-
tions, is at the same time most completely Amer-
ican in so far as it has most distinctly illustrated
and most successfully represented those political
ideas which have given to American history its
chief significance in the general work of civiliza-
tion.
The United States are not unfrequently spoken
The Town-meeting. 11
of as a " new country," in terms which would be
appropriate if applied to Australia or New Zea-
land, and which are not inappropriate as applied
to the vast region west of the Mississippi River,
where the white man had hardly set foot before
the beginning of the present century. New Eng-
land, however, has a history which carries us back
to the times of James I. ; and while its cities are
full of such bustling modern life as one sees in
Liverpool or Manchester or Glasgow, its rural
towns show us much that is old-fashioned in as-
pect, — much that one can approach in an antiqua-
rian spirit. We are there introduced to a phase
of social life which is highly interesting on its
own account and which has played an important
part in the world, yet which, if not actually pass-
ing away, is at least becoming so rapidly modified
as to afford a theme for grave reflections to those
who have learned how to appreciate its value. As
any far-reaching change in the condition of landed
property in England, due to agricultural causes,
might seriously affect the position of one of the
noblest and most useful aristocracies that has ever
existed ; so, on the other hand, as we consider the
possible action of similar causes upon \\\q person^
net and upon tlie occupations of rural New Eng-
land, we are unwillingly forced to contemphite tho
12 American Political Ideas.
possibility of a deterioration in the character of
the most perfect democracy the world has ever
seen.
In the outward aspect of a village in Massachu-
setts or Connecticut, the feature which would be
most likely first to impress itself upon the mind
of a visitor from England is the manner in which
the village is laid out and built. Neither in Eng-
land nor anywhere else in western Europe have I
ever met with a village of the New England type.
In English villages one finds small houses closely
crowded together, sometimes in blocks of ten or a
dozen, and inhabited by people belonging to the
lower orders of society ; while the fine houses of
gentlemen stand quite apart in the country, per-
haps out of sight of one another, and surrounded by
very extensive grounds. The origin of the village,
in a mere aggregation of tenants of the lord of the
manor, is thus vividly suggested. In France one
is still more impressed, I think, with this closely
packed structure of the village. In the New Eng-
land village, on the other hand, the finer and the
poorer houses stand side by side along the road.
• There are wide straight streets overarched with
spreading elms and maples, and on either side
stand the houses, with little green lawns in front,
called in rustic parlance " door-yards." The finer
The Town-meeting. 13
houses may stand a thousand feet apart from their
neighbours on either side, while between the poor-
er ones there may be intervals of from twenty to
one hundred feet, but they are never found crowd-
ed together in blocks. Built in this capacious
fashion, a village of a thousand inhabitants may
have a main street more than a mile in length,
with half a dozen crossing streets losing them-
selves gradually in long stretches of country road.
The finest houses are not ducal palaces, but may
be compared with the ordinary country-houses of
gentlemen in England. The poorest houses are
never hovels, such as one sees in the Scotch High-
lands. The picturesque and cosy cottage at Shot-
tery, where Shakespeare used to do his courting,
will serve very well as a sample of the humblest
sort of old-fashioned ISTew England farm-house.
But most of the dwellings in the village come be-
tween these extremes. They are plain neat wood-
en houses, in capaciousness more like villas than
cottages. A New England village street, laid out
in this way, is usually very picturesque and beau-
tiful, and it is highly characteristic. In compar-
ing it with things in Europe, where one rarely
finds anything at all like it, one must go to some-
thing very difTerent from a village. As you stand
iu the Court of llerocs at Ycreaillcs and look down
14 American Political Ideas.
the broad and noble avenue that leads to Paris,
the effect of the vista is much like that of a
New England village street. As American villages
grow into cities, the increase in the value of laud
usually tends to crowd the houses together into
blocks as in a European city. But in some of our
western cities founded and settled by people from
New England, this spacious fashion of building
has been retained for streets occupied by dwell-
ing-houses. In Cleveland — a city on the south-
ern shore of Lake Erie, with a population about
equal to that of Edinburgh — there is a street
some five or six miles in length and five hundred
feet in width, bordered on each side with a double
row of arching trees, and with handsome stone
houses, of sufficient variety and freedom in archi-
tectural design, standing at intervals of from one
to two hundred feet along the entire length of
the street. The effect, it is needless to add, is very
noble indeed. The vistas remind one of the nave
and aisles of a huge cathedral.^
Now this generous way in which a New Eng-
land village is built is very closely associated with
the historical origin of the village and with the
peculiar kind of political and social life by which
it is characterized. First of all, it implies abun-
dance of land. As a rule the head of each family
The Town-meeting. 15
owns the house in which he lives and the ground
on which it is built. The relation of landlord and
tenant, though not unknown, is not commonly met
with. No sort of social distinction or political
privilege is associated with the ownership of land ;
and the legal differences between real and person-
al property, especially as regards ease of transfer,
have been reduced to the smallest minimum that
practical convenience will allow. Each household-
er, therefore, though an absolute proprietor, can-
not be called a miniature lord of the manor, be-
cause there exists no permanent dependent class
such as is implied in the use of such a phrase.
Each larger proprietor attends in person to the
cultivation of his own land, assisted perhaps by
his own sons or by neighbours working for hire in
the leisure left over from the care of their own
smaller estates. So in the interior of the house
there is usually no domestic service that is not
performed by the mother of the family and the
dauglitcrs. Yet in spite of this universality of
manual labour, the people are as far as possible
from presenting the appearance of peasants. Poor
or shabbily - dressed people are rarely seen, and
there is no one in the village whom it would bo
proper to address in a patronizing tone, or who
would not consider it a gross insult to be offered
16 American Political Ideas.
a shilling. As with poverty, so with dram-drink-
ing and with crime; all alike are conspicuous by
their absence. In a village of one thousand in-
habitants there will be a poor-house where ^yq
or six decrepit old people are supported at the
common charge; and there will be one tavern
where it is not easy to find anything stronger to
drink than light beer or cider. The danger from
thieves is so slight that it is not always thought
necessary to fasten the outer doors of the house
at night. The universality of literary culture is
as remarkable as the freedom with which all per-
sons engage in manual labour. The village of a
thousand inhabitants will be very likely to have
a public circulating library, in which you may find
Professor Huxley's " Lay Sermons " or Sir Henry
Maine's "Ancient Law": it will surely have a
high -school and half a dozen schools for small
children. A person unable to read and write is
as great a rarity as an albino or a person with six
fingers. The farmer who threshes his own com
and cuts his own firewood has very likely a pi-
ano in his family sitting-room, with the Atlantic
Monthly on the table and Milton and Tennyson,
Gibbon and Macaulay on his shelves, while his
daughter, who has baked bread in the morning, is
perhaps ready to paint on china in the af ternooni
The Town-meeting, 17
In former times theological questions largely oc-
cupied the attention of the people; and there is
probably no part of the world where the Bible
has been more attentively read, or where the mys-
teries of Christian doctrine have to so great an
extent been made the subject of earnest discussion
in every household. Hence we find in the New
England of to-day a deep religious sense combined
with singular flexibility of mind and freedom of
thought. ! I
A state of society so completely democratic as
that here described has not often been found in
connection with a very high and complex civiliza-
tion. In contemplating these old mountain vil-
lages of I^ew England, one descries slow modifi-
cations in the structure of society which threaten
somewhat to lessen its dignity. The immense
productiveness of the soil in our western states,
combined with cheapness of transportation, tends
to affect seriously the agricultural interests of New
England as well as those of our mother-country.
There is a visible tendency for farms to pass into
the hands of proprietors of an inferior type to that
of the former owners, — men who are content with
a lower standard of comfort and culture; while
the sons of the old farmers go off to the universi-
ties to prepare for a professional career, and the
18 American Political Ideas,
daughters marry merchants or lawyers in the cit-
ies. The mountain-streams of New England, too,
afford so much water-power as to bring in ugly
factories to disfigure the beautiful ravines, and to
introduce into the community a class of people
very different from the landholding descendants
of the Puritans. When once a factory is estab-
lished near a village, one no longer feels free to
sleep with doors unbolted.
It will be long, however, I trust, before the sim-
ple, earnest and independent type of character
that has been nurtured on the Blue Hills of Mas-
sachusetts and the White Hills of New Hampshire
shall cease to operate like a powerful leaven upon
the whole of American society. Much has been
said and sung in praise of the spirit of chivalry,
which, after all, as a great historian reminds us,
" implies the arbitrary choice of one or two virt-
ues, to be practised in such an exaggerated degree
as to become vices, while the ordinary laws of
right and wrong are forgotten."* Quite enough
has been said, too, in discredit of Puritanism, —
its narrowness of aim, its ascetic proclivities, its
quaint affectations of Hebraism. Yet these things
were but the symptoms of the intensity of its rev-
■X-
Freeman, "Norman Conquest," v, 482.
The Town-meeting, 19
erence for that grand spirit of Hebraism, of which
Mr. Matthew Arnold speaks, to which we owe the
Bible and Christianity. ISTo loftier ideal has ever
been conceived than that of the Puritan who wonld
fain have made of the world a City of God. If
we could sum up all that England owes to Puri-
tanism, the story would be a great one indeed. As
regards the United States, we may safely say that
what is noblest in our history to-day, and of hap-
piest augury for our social and political future,
is the impress left upon the character of our peo-
ple by the heroic men who came to New England
early in the seventeenth century.
The settlement of New England by the Puri-
tans occupies a peculiar position in the annals of
colonization, and without understanding this we
cannot properly appreciate the character of the
purely democratic society which I have sought to
describe. As a general rule colonies have been
founded, either by governments or by private en- I
terprise, for political or commercial reasons. The
aim has been — on the part of governments — to
annoy some rival power, or to get rid of crimi-
nals, or to open some new avenue of trade, or —
on the ])art of the people — to escape from strait-
encnl circumstances at homo, or to find a refuge
from religious persecution. In the settlement of
20 American Political Ideas.
New England none of these motives were opera-
tive except the last, and that only to a slight ex-
tent. Tlie Puritans who fled from Nottingham-
shire to Holland in 1608, and twelve years after-
wards crossed the ocean in the Mayflower^ may be
said to have been driven from England by perse-
cution. But this was not the case with the Puri-
tans who between 1630 and 1650 went from Lin-
colnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and from Dorset
and Devonshire, and founded the colonies of Mas-
sachusetts and Connecticut. These men left their
homes at a time when Puritanism was waxing
powerful and could not be assailed with impunity.
They belonged to the upper and middle classes
of the society of that day, outside of the peerage.
Mr. Freeman has pointed out the importance of
the change by which, after the Norman Conquest,
the Old-English nobility or thegnhood was pushed
down into " a secondary place in the political and
social scale." Of the far-reaching effects of this
change upon the whole subsequent history of the
English race I shall hereafter have occasion to
speak. The proximate effect was that "the an-
cient lords of the soil, thus thrust down into the
second rank, formed that great body of freehold-
ers, the stout gentry and yeomanry of England,
who were for so many ages the strength of the
Tlie Town-ineeting. 21
land."* It was from this ancient thegnhood that
the Puritan settlers of New England were mainly
descended. It is no unusual thing for a Massa-
chusetts family to trace its pedigree to a lord of
the manor in tlie thirteenth or fourteenth century.
The leaders of the New England emigration were
country gentlemen of good fortune, similar in po-
sition to such men as Hampden and Cromwell ;
a large proportion of them had taken degrees at
Cambridge. The rank and file were mostly intel-
ligent and prosperous yeomen. The lowest ranks
of society were not represented in the emigration ;
and all idle, shiftless, or disorderly people were
rigorously refused admission into the new com-
munities, the early history of which was therefore
singularly free from anything like riot or mutiny.
To an extent unparalleled, therefore, in the annals
of colonization, the settlers of New England were
a body oi picked men. Their Puritanism was the
natural outcome of their free-thinking, combined
with an earnestness of character which could con-
strain them to any sacrifices needful for realizing
their high ideal of life. They gave up pleasant
homes in England, and they left them with no
fcelitig of rancour towards their native land, in or-
* Freeman, "Comparative Politics," 204.
22 American Political Ideas.
der that, by dint of whatever hardship, they might
establish in the American wilderness what should
approve itself to their judgment as a god-fearing
community. It matters little that their concep-
tions were in some respects narrow. In the un-
flinching adherence to duty which prompted their
enterprise, and in the sober intelligence with w^hich
it was carried out, we have, as I said before, the
key to what is best in the history of the American
people.
Out of such a colonization as that here described
nothing but a democratic society could very well
come, save perhaps in case of a scarcity of arable
land. Between the country gentleman and the
yeoman who has become a landed proprietor, the
difference is not great enough to allow the es-
tablishment of permanent distinctions, social or
political. Immediately on their arrival in New
England, the settlers proceeded to form for them-
selves a government as purely democratic as any
that has ever been seen in the world. Instead
of scattering about over the country, the require-
ments of education and of public worship, as well
as of defence against Indian attacks, obliged them
to form small village communities. As these vil-
lages multiplied, the surface of the country came
to be laid out in small districts (usually from six
The Town-meeting. 23
to ten miles in length and breadth) called tovm-
shvps. Each township contained its village togeth-
er with the woodlands surrounding it. In later
days two or more villages have often grown up
within the limits of the same township, and the
road from one village to another is sometimes
bordered with homesteads and cultivated fields
throughout nearly its whole length. In the
neighbourhood of Boston villages and small towns
crowd closely together for twenty miles in every
direction ; and all these will no doubt by and by
grow together into a vast and complicated city, in
somewhat the same way that London has grown.
From the outset the government of the town-
ship was vested in the Town - meetlng, — an in-
stitution which in its present form is said to be
peculiar to New England, but which, as we shall
see, has close analogies with local self-governing
bodies in other ages and countries. Once in each
year — usually in the month of March — a meeting
is held, at which every adult male residing within
the limits of the township is expected to be pres-
ent, and is at liberty to address the meeting or to
vote upon any question that may come up.
In the first years of the colonies it seems to
have been attempted to hold town-meetings every
month, and to discuss all the affairs of the com-
24 American Political Ideas.
munity in these assemblies ; but this was soon
found to be a cunabrous way of transacting public
business, and as early as 1635 we find selectmen
chosen to administer the affairs of the to^vnship
during the intervals between the assemblies. As
the system has perfected itself, at each annual
town-meeting there are chosen not less than three
or more than nine selectmen, according to the
size of the township. Besides these, there are
chosen a town - clerk, a town - treasurer, a school-
committee, assessors of taxes, overseers of the
poor, constables, surveyors of highways, fence-
viewers, and other officers. In very small town-
ships the selectmen themselves may act as assessors
of taxes or overseers of the poor. The selectmen
may appoint police-officers if such are required ;
they may act as a Board of Health; in addition
to sundry specific duties too numerous to mention
here, they have the general superintendence of all
public business save such as is expressly assigned
to the other officers ; and whenever circumstances
may seem to require it they are authorized to call
a town-meeting. The selectmen are thus the prin-
cipal town-magistrates ; and through the annual
election their responsibility to the town is main-
tained at the maximum. Yet in many ISTew Eng-
land towns re-election of the same persons yeat
The Town-meeting. 25
after year lias very commonly prevailed. I know
of an instance where the office of town-clerk was
filled by three members of one family during one
hundred and fourteen consecutive years.
Besides choosing executive officers, the town-
meeting has the power of enacting by-laws, of
making appropriations of money for town -pur-
poses, and of providing for miscellaneous emer-
gencies by what might be termed special legisla-
tion. Besides the annual meeting held in the
spring for transacting all this local business, the
selectmen are required to call a meeting in the
autumn of each year for the election of state and
county officers, each second year for the election
of representatives to the federal Congress, and
each fourth year for the election of the President
of the United States. >
It only remains to add that, as an assembly of
the whole people becomes impracticable in a large
community, so when the population of a township
lias grown to ten or twelve thousand, the town-
meeting is discontinued, the town is incorporated
as a city, and its affairs are managed by a mayor,
a board of aldermen, and a common council, ac-
cording to the system adopted in London in the
reign of Edward I. In America, therefore, the
distinction between cities and towns has nothing
2G American Political Ideas.
to do with the presence or absence of a cathedral,
but refers solely to differences in the communal
or municipal government. In the city the com-
mon council, as a representative body, replaces (in
a certain sense) the town-meeting ; a representative
government is substituted for a pure democracy.
But the city officers, like the selectmen of towns,
are elected annually; and in no case (I believe)
has municipal government fallen into the hands
of a self-perpetuating body, as it has done in so
many instances in England owing to the unwise
policy pursued by the Tudors and Stuarts in their
grants of charters.
It is only in I^ew England that the township
system is to be found in its completeness. In
several southern and western states the admin-
istrative unit is the county, and local affairs are
managed by county commissioners elected by the
people. Elsewhere we find a mixture of the
county and township systems. In some of the
western states settled by [N^ew England people,
town-meetings are held, though their powers are
somewhat less extensive than in New England.
In the settlement of Virginia it was attempted to
copy directly the parishes and vestries, boroughs
and guilds of England. But in the southern states
generally the great size of the plantations and the
The Town-meeting. 27
wide dispersion of the population hindered the
growth of towns, so that it was impossible to have
an administrative unit smaller than the county.
As Tocqueville said fifty years ago, " the farther
south we go the less active does the business of
the township or parish become ; the population
exercises a less immediate influence on affairs ;
the power of the elected magistrate is augmented
and that of the election diminished, while the pub-
lic spirit of the local communities is less quickly
awakened and less influential." This is almost
equally true to-day ; yet with all these differences
in local organization, there is no part of our coun-
try in which the spirit of local self-government
can be called weak or uncertain. I have described
the Town-meeting as it exists in the states where
it first grew up and has since chiefly flourished.
But something very like the "town-meeting prin-
ciple" lies at the bottom of all the political life
of the United States. To maintain vitality in the
centre without sacrificing it in the parts ; to pre-
serve tranquillity in the mutual relations of forty
powerful states, while keeping the people every-
where as far as possible in direct contact with the
government ; sucli is the political problem which
tlie American Union exists for the })urpose of
solving; and of this great truth every American
28 American Political Ideas.
citizen is supposed to have some glimmering, how-
ever crude.
It has been said that the town-governments of
l^ew England were established without any con-
scious reference to precedent ; but, however this
may be, they are certainly not without precedents
and analogies, to enumerate which will carry us
very far back in the history of the Aryan world.
At the beginning of his essay on the " Growth of
the English Constitution," Mr. Freeman gives an
eloquent account of the May assemblies of Uri
and Appenzell, when the whole people elect their
magistrates for the year and vote upon amend-
ments to the old laws or upon the adoption of new
ones. Such a sight Mr. Freeman seems to think
can be seen nowhere but in Switzerland, and he
reckons it among the highest privileges of liis life
to have looked upon it. But I am unable to see
in what respect the town -meeting in Massachu-
setts differs from the Landesgemeinde or cantonal
assembly in Switzerland, save that it is held in a
town-hall and not in the open air, that it is con-
ducted with somewhat less of pageantry, and that
the freemen w^ho attend do not carry arms even
by way of ceremony. In the Swiss assembly, as
Mr. Freeman truly observes, we see exemplified
the most democratic phase of the old Teutonic
The Town-meeting, 29
constitution as described in the "Germania" of
Tacitus, "the earliest picture which history can
give us of the political and social being of our own
forefathers." The same remark, in precisely the
same terms, would be true of the town-meetings
of New England. Political institutions, on the
White Mountains and on the Alps, not only close-
ly resemble each other, but are connected by strict
bonds of descent from a common original.
The most primitive self-governing body of
which we have any knowledge is the village-com-
munity of the ancient Teutons, of which such
strict counterparts are found in other parts of tho
Aryan world as to make it apparent that in its
essential features it must be an inheritance from
prehistoric Arj^an antiquity. In its Teutonic form
the primitive village -community (or rather, the
spot inhabited by it) is known as the Marie, — that
is, a place defined by a boundary-line. One char-
acteristic of the mark-community is that all its free
members are in theory supposed to be related to
each other through descent from a common pro-
genitor; and in this respect the mark-community
agrees with the gens, ytvog, or clan. The earliest
form of political union in the world is one which
rests, not upon territorial contiguity, but npon
blood-relatiunship, eitlier real or assumed througli
80 America/a Political Ideas,
the legal fiction of adoption. In the lowest sav-
agery blood-relationship is the only admissible or
conceivable ground for sustained common action
among groups of men. Among peoples which
w^ander about, supporting themselves either by
hunting, or at a somewhat more advanced stage of
development by the rearing of flocks and herds, a
group of men, thus permanently associated through
ties of blood -relationship, is what we call a clan.
When by the development of agricultural pursuits
the nomadic mode of life is brouo^ht to an end,
when the clan remains stationary upon some piece
of territory surrounded by a strip of forest-land,
or other boundaries natural or artificial, then the
clan becomes a mark-community. The profound
linguistic researches of Pictet, Fick, and others
have made it probable that at the time when the
Old-Aryan language was broken up into the dia-
lects from which the existing languages of Europe
are descended, the Aryan tribes were passing from
a purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incip-
ient agricultural stage, somewhat like that which
characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in the
seventeenth century. The comparative study of
institutions leads to results in harmony with this
view, showing us the mark-community of our Teu-
tonic ancestors with the clear traces of its origin
The Town-meeting. 31
in the more primitive clan ; though, with Mr. Kem-
ble, I do not doubt that by the time of Tacitus
the German tribes had long since reached the ag-
ricultural stage.
Territorially the old Teutonic mark consisted
of three divisions. There was the milage marli^
where the people lived in houses crowded closely
together, no doubt for defensive purposes ; there
was the arable mark^ divided into as many lots as
there were householders ; and there was the com-
mon raark^ or border-strip of untilled land, where-
in all the inhabitants of the village had common
rights of pasturage and of cutting firewood. All
this land originally was the property not of any
one family or individual, but of the comm.unity.
The study of the mark carries us back to a time
when there may have been private property in
weapons, utensils, or trinkets, but not in real es-
tate.* Of the three kinds of land the common
mark, save where curtailed or usurped by lords in
the days of feudalism, has generally remained pub-
lic property to this day. The pleasant green com-
mons or squares which occur in the midst of towns
and cities in England and the United States most
probably originated from the coalescence of adja-
* This is disputed, however. Sec Ross, "Eiirly History
of Laiidholdiuij amoug the GermuQS,"
32 American Political Ideas.
cent mark-communities, whereby the border-Land
used in common by all was brought into the cen-
tre of the new aggregate. In towns of modern
date this origin of the common is of course for-
gotten, and in accordance with the general law by
which the useful thing after discharging its func-
tions survives for purposes of ornament, it is in-
troduced as a pleasure-ground> In old towns of
New England, however, the little park where boys
play ball or children and nurses " take the air "
was once the common pasture of the town. Even
Boston Common did not entirely cease to be a
grazing-field until 1830. It was in the village-
mark, or assemblage of homesteads, that private
property in real estate naturally began. In the
Russian villages to-day the homesteads are private
property, while the cultivated land is owned in
common. This was the case with the arable mark
of our ancestors. The arable mark belonged to
the community, and was temporarily divided into
as many fields as there were households, though
the division was probably not into equal parts:
more likely, as in Russia to-day, the number of
labourers in each household was taken into the ac-
count; and at irregular intervals, as fluctuations
in population seemed to require it, a thorough-
going redivision was effected., r
The Tovm-meeting. 33
In carrying out such divisions and redivisions, as
well as in all matters relating to village, ploughed
field, or pasture, the mark-community was a law
unto itself. Though individual freedom was by
no means considerable, the legal existence of the
individual being almost entirely merged in that of
his clan, the mark -community was a completely
self-governing body. The assembly of the mark-
men, or members of the community, allotted land
for tillage, determined the law or declared the
custom as to methods of tillage, fixed the dates
for sowing and reaping, voted upon the admis-
sion of new families into the village, and in gen-
eral transacted what was then regarded as the
public business of the community. In all essen-
tial respects this village assembly or marh-mote
would seem to have resembled the town-meetings
of New England.
Such was the mark- community of the ancient
Teutons, as we gather partly from hints afforded
by Tacitus and partly from the comparative study
of English, German, and Scandinavian institutions.
In Russia and in Hindustan we find the same prim-
itive form of social organization existing with
ver}^ little change at the present day. Alike in
Hindu and in Russian village -communities we
find the group of habitations, each despotically
34 Americcm Political Ideas.
ruled by ^ pater-familias ; we find the pasture-
land owned and enjoyed in common ; and we find
the arable land divided into separate lots, which
are cultivated according to minute regulations
established by the community. But in India the
occasional redistribution of lots survives only in
a few localities, and as a mere tradition in others ;
the arable mark has become private property, as
well as the homesteads. In Russia, on the other
hand, re-allotments occur at irregular intervals
averaging something like fifteen years. In India
the local government is carried on in some places
by a Council of Yillage Elders, and in other places
by a Headman whose ofiice is sometimes described
as hereditary, but is more probably elective, the
choice being confined, as in the case of the old
Teutonic kingship, to the members of a particular
family. In the Eussian village, on the other hand^
the government is conducted by an assembly at
which every head of a household is expected to
be present and vote on all matters of public
concern. This assembly elects the Yillage Elder,
or chief executive officer, the tax-collector, the
watchman, and the communal herd-boy ; it directs
the allotment of the arable land; and in general
matters of local legislation its power is as great as
that of the New England town-meeting, — in some
The Town-meeting. 35
respects perhaps even greater, since the precise
extent of its powers has never been determined
by legislation, and (according to Mr. Wallace)
" there is no means of appealing against its deci-
sions." To those who are in the habit of regard-
ing Russia simply as a despotically-governed coun-
try, such a statement may seem surprising. To
those who, because the Russian government is
called a bureaucracy, have been led to think of it
as analogous to the government of France undei-
the Old Regime, it may seem incredible that the
decisions of a village-assembly should not admit
of appeal to a higher authority. But in point of
fact, no two despotic governments could be lesc
alike than that of modern Russia and that of
France under the Old Regime. The Russian
government is autocratic inasmuch as over the
larger part of the country it has simply succeeded
to the position of the Mongolian khans who from
the tliirteenth to the fifteenth century held the
Russian people in subjection. This Mongolian
government was — to use a happy distinction sug-
gested by Sir Henry Maine — a tax-taking despot-
ism, not a legislative despotism. The conquer-
ors exacted tribute, but did not interfere with the
laws and customs of the subject people. When
the Russians drove out the Mongols they ex-
36 America7i Political Ideas.
changed a despotism which they hated for one in
which they felt a national pride, but in one curious
respect the position of the people with reference
to their rulers has remained the same. The im-
perial government exacts from each village-com-
munity a tax in gross, for which the community
as a whole is responsible, and which may or may
not be oppressive in amount; but the government
has never interfered with local legislation or with
local customs. Thus in the mir^ or village-com-
munity, the Russians still retain an element of
sound political life, the importance of which ap-
pears when we consider that live -sixths of the
population of European Russia is comprised in
these communities. The tax assessed upon them
by the imperial government is, however, a feature
which — even more than their imperfect system
of property and their low grade of mental culture
— separates them by a world-wide interval from
the New England township, to the primeval em-
bryonic stage of which they correspond.
From these illustrations we see that the mark,
or self-governing village-community, is an institu-
tion which must be referred back to early Aryan
times. Whether the mark ever existed in Eng-
land, in anything like the primitive form in which
it is seen in the Russian rah\ is doubtful. ProfesS'
The Town-meeting. 37
or Stubbs (one of the greatest living authorities
on such a subject) is inclined to think that the
Teutonic settlers of Britain had passed beyond
this stage before they migrated from Germany.*
Nevertheless the traces of the mark, as all admit,
are plentiful enough in England ; and some of its
features have survived down to modern times. In
the great number of town-names that are formed
from patronymics, such as Walsingham " the home
of the Walsings," Harlington " the town of the
Harlings," etc.,t we have unimpeachable evidence
of a time when the town was regarded as tlie
dwelling-place of a clan. Indeed, the comparative
rarity of the word mark in English laws, charters,
and local names (to which Professor Stubbs al-
ludes) may be due to the fact that the word town
has precisely the same meaning. Mark means
originally the belt of waste land encircling the vil-
lage, and secondarily the village with its periphe-
ry. Town means originally a hedge or enclosure,
and secondarily the spot that is enclosed : the mod-
ern German zavm,^ a " hedge," preserves the origi-
nal meaning. But traces of the mark in Eng-
land are not found in etymology alone. I have
* Stubbs, "Constitutional Uistory," i. 84.
f Kemble, "Saiona in England," i. 59.
38 American Political Ideas.
already alluded to the origin of the " common " in
English towns. What is still more important is
that in some parts of England cultivation in com-
mon has continued until quite recently. The lo-
cal legislation of the mark appears in the tuns-
cipesmot^ — a word which is simply Old-English for
" town-meeting." In the shires where the Danes
acquired a firm foothold, the township was often
called a "by"; and it had the power of enacting
its own " by-laws " or town-laws, as New England
townships have to-day. But above all, the assem-
bly of the markmen has left vestiges of itself in
the constitution of the parish and the manor.
The mark or township, transformed by the proc-
ess of feudalization, becomes the manor. The
process of feudalization, throughout western Eu-
rope in general, was no doubt begun by the in-
stitution of Benefices, or " grants of Roman pro-
vincial land by the chieftains of the" Teutonic
" tribes which overran the Roman Empire ; such
grants being conferred on their associates upon
certain conditions, of which the commonest was
military service."* The feudal regime naturally
reached its most complete development in France,
which affords the most perfect example of a Ro-
^^■^— ^— ^■^^^ I III.. !■ — I ■ ■ . ■ ■ ■ -■ ■ J
* Maine, " YiUage Communities," Lond., 1871, p. 132.
The Town-meeting. 39
man territory overrun and permanently held in
possession by Teutonic conquerors. Other causes
assisted the process, the most potent perhaps being
the chaotic condition of European society during
the break-up of the Carolingian Empire and the
Scandinavian and Hungarian invasions. Land was
better protected when held of a powerful chieftain
than when held in one's own right ; and hence the
prcictice of commendation, by which free allodial
proprietors were transformed into the tenants of a
lord, became fashionable and was gradually ex-
tended to all kinds of estates. In England the
effects of feudalization were different from what
they were in France, but the process was still car-
ried very far, especially under the Norman kings.
The theory grew up that all the public land in
the kingdom was tlie king's waste, and that all
landholders were the king's tenants. Similarly
in every township the common land was the lord's
waste and the landholders were the lord's tenants.
Thus the township became transformed into the
manor. Yet even by such a change as this the
townsmen or tenants of the manor did not in
England lose their self-government. "The en-
croachments of the lord," as Sir Henry Maine
observes, *' were in proportion to the want of cer-
tainty in the rights of the community." The
40 American Political Ideas,
lord's proprietorsliip gave him no authority to dis-
turb customary rights. The old township-assem-
bly partially survived in the Court Baron, Court
Leet, and Customary Court of the Manor; and in
these courts the arrangements for the common
husbandry were determined. .
This metamorphosis of the township into the
manor, however, was but partial: along with it
went the partial metamorphosis of the township
into the parish, or district assigned to a priest.
Professor Stubbs has pointed out that '' the boun-
daries of the parish and the township or townships
with which it coincides are generally the same:
in small parishes the idea and even the name of
township is frequently, at the present day, sunk
in that of the parish; and all the business that
is not manorial is despatched in vestry-meetings,
which are however primarily meetings of the town-
ship for church purposes."^ The parish officers,
including overseers of the poor, assessors, and way-
wardens, are still elected in vestry-meeting by the
freemen of the township. And while the juris-
diction of the manorial courts has been defined by
charter, or by the customary law existing at the
time of the manorial grant, "all matters arising
■ * Stubbs, "Constitutional History," i. 85.
The Town-meeting. 41
outside that jurisdiction come under the manage-
ment of the vestry."
In England, therefore, the free village-commu-
nity, though perhaps nowhere found in its primi-
tive integrity, has nevertheless survived in partial-
ly transfigured forms which have played no unim-
portant part in the history of the English people.
In one shape or another the assembly of freemen
for purposes of local legislation has always existed.
The Puritans who colonized New England, there-
fore, did not invent the town-meeting. They were
familiar already with the proceedings of the ves-
try-meeting and the manorial courts, but they were
severed now from church and from aristocracy.
So they had but to discard the ecclesiastical and
lordly terminology, w^ith such limitations as they
involved, and to reintegrate the separate jurisdic-
tions into one, — and forthwith the old assembly of
the township, founded in immemorial tradition,
but revivified by new thoughts and purposes gained
through ages of political training, emerged into
fresh life and entered upon a more glorious career.
It is not to an audience which speaks the Eng-
lish language that I need to argue the point that
the preservation of local self-government is of the
higliest importance fur the maintenance of a rich
and powerful national life. As we con template
42 American Political Ideas.
the vicissitudes of local self-government in the va-
rious portions of the Aryan world, we see the con-
trasted fortunes of France and England illustrating
for us most forcibly the significance of this truth.
For the preservation of local self-government in
England various causes may be assigned; but of
these there are two which may be cited as espe-
cially prominent. In the first place, owing to the
peculiar circumstances of the Teutonic settlement
of Britain, the civilization of England previous to
the Norman Conquest was but little affected by
Roman ideas or institutions. In the second place
the thrusting down of the old thegnhood by the
!N"orman Conquest (to which I have already al-
luded) checked the growth of a noblesse or adel of
the continental type, — a nobility raised above the
common people like a separate caste. For the old
thegnhood, which might have grown into such a
caste, was pushed down into a secondary position,
and the peerage which arose after the Conquest
was something different from a noblesse. It was
primarily a nobility of office rather than of rank
or privilege. The peers were those men who re-
tained the right of summons to the Great Council,
or Witenagemote, which has survived as the House
of Lords. The peer was therefore the holder of a
legislative and judicial office, which only one of
Tlie Town-meeting. 43
his children could inherit, from the very nature of
the case, and which none of his children could
share with him. Hence the brothers and younger
children of a peer were always commoners, and
their interests were not remotely separated from
those of other commoners. Hence after the estab-
lishment of a House of Commons, their best chance
for a political career lay in representing the inter-
ests of the people in the lower house. Hence be-
tween the upper and lower strata of English so-
ciety there has always been kept up a circulation
or interchange of ideas and interests, and the effect
of this upon English history has been prodigious.
While on tlie continent a sovereign like Charles
the Bold could use his nobility to extinguish the
liberties of the merchant towns of Flanders, noth-
ing of the sort was ever possible in England.
Throughout the Middle Ages, in every contest be-
tween the people and the crown, the weight of the
peerage was thrown into the scale in favour of
popular liberties. But for this peculiar position
of the peerage we might have had no Earl Simon ;
it is largely through it that representative govern-
ment and local liberties have been preserved to the
Englitfh race.
In France the course of events has brought
about very different results. I shall defer to my
44 Amerioan Political Ideas.
next lecture the consideration of the vicissitudes
of local self-government under the Roman Em-
pire, because that point is really incident upon the
study of the formation of vast national aggregates.
Suffice it now to say that when the Teutons over-
came Gaul, they became rulers over a population
which had been subjected for five centuries to
that slow but mighty process of trituration which
the Empire everywhere brought to bear upon lo-
cal self-government. While the Teutons in Brit-
ain, moreover, enslaved their slightly romanized
subjects and gave little heed to their language, re-
ligion, or customs ; the Teutons in Gaul, on the
other hand, quickly adopted the language and re-
ligion of their intensely romanized subjects and
acquired to some extent their way of looking at
things. Hence in the early history of France
there was no such stubborn mass of old Aryan lib-
erties to be dealt with as in the early history of
England. IS'or was there any powerful middle
class distributed through the country to defend
such liberties as existed. Beneath the turbulent
throng of Teutonic nobles, among whom the king
was only the most exalted and not always the
strongest, there lay the Gallo-Eoraan population
which had so long been accustomed to be ruled
without representation by a distant government
The Town-meeting, 45
exercising its authority through innuraerable pre-
fects. Such Teutonic rank and file as tliere was
became absorbed into this population ; and except
in sundry chartered towns there was nothing like
a social stratum interposed between the nobles
and the common people.
The slow conversion of the feudal monarchy of
the early Capetiaus into the absolute despotism
of Louis Xiy. was accomplished by the king
gradually conquering his vassals one after anoth-
er, and adding their domains to his own. As one
vassal territory after another was added to the
royal domain, the king sent prefects, responsible
only to himself, to administer its local affairs, sed-
ulously crushing out, so far as possible, the last
vestiges of self-government. The nobles, deprived
of their provincial rule, in great part flocked to
Paris to become idle courtiers. The means for
carrying on the gigantic machinery of centralized
administration, and for supporting the court in its
follies, were wrung from the groaning peasantry
with a cynical indifference like that with which
tribute is extorted by barbaric chieftains from a
conquered enemy. And thus came about that
abominable state of things which a century since
was abruptly ended by one of the fiercest convul-
sions of modern times.
46 American Political Ideas,
The prodigious superiority — in respect to na-
tional vitality — of a freely governed country over
one that is governed by a centralized despot-
ism, is nowhere more brilliantly illustrated than in
the contrasted fortunes of France and En^rland as
colonizing nations. When we consider the de-
clared rivalry between France and England in
their plans for colonizing the barbarous regions
of the earth, when we consider that the military
power of the two countries has been not far from
equal, and that France has at times shown herself
a maritime power by no means to be despised, it
seems to me that her overwhelming and irretriev-
able defeat by England in the struggle for colo-
nial empire is one of the most striking and one of
the most instructive facts in all modern history.
In my lectures of last year (at University College)
I showed that, in the struggle for the possession
of N'orth America, where the victory of England
was so decisive as to settle the question for all
coming time, the causes of the French failure are
very plainly to be seen. The French colony in
Canada was one of the most complete examples
of a despotic government that the world has ever
seen. All the autocratic and bureaucratic ideas
of Louis Xiy. were here carried out without let
or hinderance. It would be incredible, were it not
The Town-meeting. 47
attested by snch abundant evidence, that the af-
fairs of any people could be subjected to such mi-
nute and sleepless supervision as were the affairs
of the French colonists in Canada. A man could
not even build his own house, or rear his own
cattle, or sow his own seed, or reap his own grain,
save under the supervision of prefects acting
under instructions from the home government.
1^0 one was allowed to enter or leave the colony
without permission, not from the colonists but
from the king. Xo farmer could visit Montreal
or Quebec without permission. No Huguenot
could set his foot on Canadian soil. No public
meetings of any kind were tolerated, nor were
there any means of giving expression to one's
opinions on any subject. The details of all this,
which may be read in Mr. Parkman's admirable
work on " The Old Regime in Canada," make a
wonderful chapter of history. Never was a colony,
moreover, so loaded with bounties, so fostered,
petted, and protected. The result was absolute
paralysis, political and social. When after a cen-
tury of irritation and skirmishing the French in
Canada came to a life -and -death struggle with
the self-governing colonists of New England, New
York, and Virginia, the result for tlie French
power in America was instant and irretrievable
48 American Political Ideas.
annihilation. The town - meeting pitted against
the bureaucracy was like a Titan overthrowing a
cripple. The historic lesson owes its value to the
fact that this ruin of the French scheme of colo-
nial empire was due to no accidental circum-
stances, but was involved in the very nature of
the French political system. Obviously it is im-
possible for a people to plant beyond sea a colo-
ny which shall be self-supporting, unless it has
retained intact the power of self-government at
home. It is to the self-government of England,
and to no lesser cause, that we are to look for the
secret of that boundless vitality which has given
to men of English speech the uttermost parts of
the earth for an inheritance. The conquest of
Canada first demonstrated this truth, and when —
in the two followine^ lectures — we shall have made
some approach towards comprehending its full
import, we shall all, I think, be ready to admit
that the triumph of Wolfe marks the greatest
turning-point as yet discernible in modern his-
tory.
II.
THE FEDERAL UNION.
The great history of Thukjdides, which after
twenty-three centuries still ranks (in spite of Mr.
Cobden) among our chief text-books of political
wisdom, has often seemed to me one of the most
mournful books in the world. At no other spot
on the earth's surface, and at no other time in
the career of mankind, has the human intellect
flowered with such luxuriance as at Athens dur-
ing the eighty -five years which intervened be-
tween the victory of Marathon and the defeat of
^gospotamos. In no other like interval of time,
and in no other community of like dimensions,
has so much work been accomplished of which we
can say with truth that it is KTi]fia Iq au, — an eter-
nal possession. It is impossible to conceive of a
day so distant, or an era of culture so exalted, that
tlie lessons taught by Athens shall cease to be of
value, or that the writings of her great thinkers
shall cease to be read witli fresh profit and de-
light. AVc understand these things far better
50 American Political Ideas.
to-day than did those monsters of erudition in
the sixteenth century who studied the classics for
philological purposes mainly. Indeed, the older
the world grows, the more varied our experience
of practical politics, the more comprehensive our
survey of universal history, the stronger our grasp
upon the comparative method of inquiry, the more
brilliant is the light thrown upon that brief day
of Athenian greatness, and the more wonderful
and admirable does it all seem. To see this glori-
ous community overthrown, shorn of half its virtue
(to use the Homeric phrase), and thrust down into
an inferior position in the world, is a mournful
spectacle indeed. And the book which sets be-
fore us, so impartially yet so eloquently, the in-
numerable petty misunderstandings and contemp-
tible jealousies which brought about this direful
result, is one of the most mournful of books.
We may console ourselves, however, for the pre-
mature overthrow of the power of Athens, by the
reflection that that power rested upon political
conditions which could not in any case have been
permanent or even long-enduring. The entire po-
litical system of ancient Greece, based as it was
upon the idea of the sovereign independence of
each single city, was one which could not fail
sooner or later to exhaust itself through chronic
The Federal Union. 51
anarchy. The only remedy lay either in some
kind of permanent federation, combined with rep-
resentative government ; or else in what we might
call " incorporation and assimilation," after the
Koman fashion. But the incorporation of one
town with another, though effected with brilliant
results in the early history of Attika, involved such
a disturbance of all the associations which in the
Greek mind clustered about the conception of a
city that it was quite impracticable on any large
or general scale. Schemes of federal union were
put into operation, though too late to be of avail
against the assaults of Macedonia and Eome. But
as for the principle of representation, that seems
to have been an invention of the Teutonic mind ;
no statesman of antiquity, either in Greece or at
Rome, seems to have conceived the idea of a city
sending delegates armed with plenary powers to
represent its interests in a general legislative as-
sembly. To the Greek statesmen, no doubt, this
too would have seemed derogatory to the dignity
of the sovereign city.
This feeling with which the ancient Greek states-
men, and to some extent the Ilomans also, regarded
the city, has become almost incomprehensible to
tlie modern mind, so far removed are we from the
political circumstances which made such a feeling
62 American Political Ideas.
possible. Teutonic civilization, indeed, has never
passed through a stage in which the foremost posi-
tion has been held by civic communities. Teu-
tonic civilization passed directly from the stage of
tribal into that of national organization, before any
Teutonic city had acquired sufficient importance
to have claimed autonomy for itself; and at the
time when Teutonic nationalities were forming,
moreover, all the cities in Europe had so long been
accustomed to recognize a master outside of them
in the person of the Roman emperor that the very
tradition of civic autonomy, as it existed in ancient
Greece, had become extinct. This difference be-
tween the political basis of Teutonic and of Graeco-
Koman civilization is one of which it would be
difficult to exaggerate the importance ; and when
thoroughly understood it goes farther, perhaps,
than anything else towards accounting for the suc-
cessive failures of the Greek and Roman political
systems, and towards inspiring us with confidence
in the future stability of the political system which
has been wrought out by the genius of the Eng-
lish race.
We saw, in the preceding lecture, how the most
primitive form of political association known to
have existed is that of the clan^ or group of fami-
lies held together by ties of descent from a com-
The Federal Union. 53
mon ancestor. "We saw how the change from a
nomadic to a stationary mode of life, attendant
upon the adoption of agricultural pursuits, con-
verted the clan into a Tnarh or village-community,
something like those which exist to-day in Russia.
The political progress of primitive society seems
to have consisted largely in the coalescence of these
small groups into larger groups. The first series
of compound groups resulting from the coalescence
of adjacent marks is that which was known in
nearly all Teutonic lands as the hundred^ in Ath-
ens as the (pparpia or Irotherhood, in Rome as the
curia. Yet alongside of the Roman group called
the curia there is a group whose name, the century^
exactly translates the name of the Teutonic group ;
and, as Mr. Freeman says, it is difficult to believe
that the Roman century did not at the outset in
some way correspond to the Teutonic hundred as
a stage in political organization. But both these
terms, as we know them in history, are survivals
from some prehistoric state of things; and whether
they were originally applied to a hundred of houses,
or of families, or of warriors, we do not know.*
M. Geflroy, in his interesting essay on the (ierma-
riia of Tacitus, suggests that the term canton may
- - - — ^ - I- - .^^
* Freeman, " Companitive Politics," 118.
54 American Political Ideas,
have a similar origin.* The outlines of these prim-
itive groups are, however, more obscure than those
of the more primitive mark, because in most cases
the}^ have been either crossed and effaced or at any
rate diminished in importance by the more highly
compounded groups which came next in order of
formation. Next above the hundred^ in order of
composition, comes the group known in ancient
Italy as the 2)agus, in Attika perhaps as the deme,
in Germany and at first in England as the ga^i or
ga, at a later date in England as the shire. What-
ever its name, this group answers to the trihe re-
garded as settled upon a certain determinate terri-
tory. Just as in the earlier nomadic life the ag-
gregation of clans makes ultimately the tribe, so
in the more advanced agricultural life of our Aryan
ancestors the aggregation of marks or village-com-
munities makes ultimately the gau or shire. Prop-
erly speaking, the name shire is descriptive of di-
vision and not of aggregation ; but this term came
into use in England after the historic order of
formation had been forgotten, and when the shire
was looked U23on as a piece of some larger whole,
such as the kingdom of Mercia or Wessex. His-
torically, however, the shire was not made, like the
* Geffroy, "Rome et les Barbares," 209.
The Federal Union. 55
departments of modern France, by the division of
the kingdom for administrative purposes, but the
kingdom was made by the union of shires that
were previously autonomous. In the primitive
process of aggregation, the shi?'e or gau, governed
by its witenagemote or *' meeting of wise men,''
and by its chief magistrate who was called ealdor-
man in time of peace and heretoga, " army-leader,"
dux^ or duke, in time of war, — the shire, I say, in
this form, is the largest and most complex politi-
cal body we find previous to the formation of king-
doms and nations. But in saying this, we have
already passed beyond the point at which we can
include in the same general formula the process
of political development in Teutonic countries on
the one hand and in Greece and Home on the
other. Up as far as the formation of the tribe,
territorially regarded, the parallelism is preserved ;
but at this point there begins an all-important di-
vergence. In the looser and more diffused society
of the rural Teutons, the tribe is spread over a
shire, and the aggregation of shires makes a king-
dom, embracing cities, towns, and rural districts
held together by similar bonds of relationship to
the central governing power. But in the society
of the old Greeks and Italians, the afrij^reicatiou
of tribes, crowded together on fortified hill-tops,
56 A'inerican Political Ideas.
makes the Ancient City^ — a very different thing,
indeed, from the modern city of later-Roman or
Teutonic foundation. Let us consider, for a mo-
ment, the difference. /
Sir Henry Maine tells us that in lEindustan
nearly all the great towns and cities have arisen
either from the simple expansion or from the ex-
pansion and coalescence of primitive village-com-
munities ; and such as have not arisen in this way,
including some of the greatest of Indian cities,
have grown up about the intrenched camps of
the Mogul emperors.* The case has been just the
same in modern Europe. Some famous cities of
England and Germany — such as Chester and Lin-
coln, Strasburg and Maintz, — grew up about the
camps of the Roman legions. But in general the
Teutonic city has been formed by the expansion
and coalescence of thickly-peopled townships and
hundreds. In the United States nearly all cities
have come from the growth and expansion of vil-
lages, with such occasional cases of coalescence as
that of Boston with Boxbury and Charlestown.
Now and then a city has been laid out as a city
ah initio^ with full consciousness of its purpose,
as a man would build a house ; and this was the
* Maine, "Village Communities," 118.
The Federal Union. 57
case Dot merely with Martin Chiizzlewit's "Eden,"
but with the city of Washington, the seat of our
federal government. But, to go back to the early
ages of England — the country which best exhibits
the normal development of Teutonic institutions
— the point which I wish especially to emphasize
is this : in no case does the city ajcypear as eqxdvor
lent to the dwelling-place of a tribe or of a confed-
eration of tribes. In no case does citizenship, or
burghership, appear to rest upon the basis of a real
or assumed community of descent from a single
real or mythical progenitor. In the primitive
mark, as we have seen, the bond which kept the
community together and constituted it a political
unit was the bond of blood-relationship, real or as-
sumed; but this was not the case with the city or
borough. The city did not correspond with the
tribe, as the mark corresponded with the clan.
Tlie aggregation of clans into tribes corresponded
with the aggregation of marks, not into cities but
into shires. The multitude of compound political
units, by the further compounding of which a na-
tion was to be formed, did not consist of cities but
of shires. The city was simply a point in the
shire distinguished by greater density of po})ula-
tion. The relations sustained by the thinly-peo-
pled rural townships and hundreds to the geu*
68 Ainerican Political Ideas.
eral government of the sliire were co-ordinate with
the relations sustained to the same government
bj those thickly-peopled townships and hundreds
w4iich upon their coalescence were known as cities
or boroughs. Of course I am speaking now in a
broad and general way, and without reference to
such special privileges or immunities as cities and
boroughs frequently obtained by royal charter in
feudal tiiues. Such special privileges — as for in-
stance the exemption of boroughs from the ordi-
nary sessions of the county court, under Henry
I.* — were in their nature grants from an external
source, and were in nowise inherent in the posi-
tion or mode of origin of the Teutonic city. And
they were, moreover, posterior in date to that em-
bryonic period of national growth of which I am
now speaking. They do not affect in any way
the correctness of my general statement, which is
sufficiently illustrated by the fact that the oldest
sliire -motes, or county -assemblies, were attended
by representatives from all the townships and
hundreds in the shire, whether such townships
and hundreds formed parts of boroughs or not.
Very different from this was the embryonic
growth of political society in ancient Greece and
■^ ■■■»■■■ ■ -., — I ■■,--■ - ■ _■ ■ -, - ,
* Stubbs, "Constitutional Historj," i 625.
The Federal Union. 59
Italy. There the aggregation of clans into tribes
and confederations of tribes resulted directly, as
we have seen, in the City. There burghership,
with its political and social rights and duties, had
its theoretical basis in descent from a common an-
cestor, or from a small group of closely - related
common ancestors. The group of fellow-citizens
was associated througli its related groups of ances-
tral household-deities, and through religious rites
performed in common to which it would have
been sacrilege to have admitted a stranger. Thus
the Ancient City was a religious as well as a politi-
cal body, and in either character it was complete
in itself and it was sovereij^n. Thus in ancient
Greece and Italy the primitive clan-assembly or
township -meeting did not grow by aggregation
into the assembly of the shire, but it developed
into the comitia or ecclesia of the city. The chief
magistrate was not the ealdormoM of early English
history, but the rex, or hasileus who combined in
himself the functions of king, general, and priest.
Thus, too, there was a severance, politically, be-
tween city and country such as the Teutonic world
has never known. The rural districts surrounding
a city might be subject to it, but could neither
share its franchise nor claim a co-ordinate fran-
chise with it. Athens, indeed, at an early period,
60 American Political Ideas.
went so far as to incorporate with itself Eleusis
and Marathon and the other rural towns of Attika.
In this one respect Athens transgressed the bounds
of ancient civic organization, and no doubt it gain-
ed greatly in power thereby. But generally in the
Hellenic world the rural population in the neigh-
bourhood of a great city were mere TnpioiKoi, or
" dwellers in the vicinity " ; the inhabitants of the
city who had moved thither from some other city,
both they and their descendants, were mere fihoL-
KOI, or " dwellers in the place " ; and neither the
one class nor the other could acquire the rights
and privileges of citizenship. A revolution, in-
deed, went on at Athens, from the time of Solon
to the time of Kleisthenes, which essentially modi-
fied the old tribal divisions and admitted to the
franchise all such families resident from time im-
memorial as did not belong to the tribes of eu-
patrids by whom the city was founded. But this
change once accomplished, the civic exclusiveness
of Athens remained very much what it was be-
fore. The popular assembly was enlarged, and
public harmony was secured ; but Athenian burgh-
ership still remained a privilege which could not
be acquired by the native of any other city.
Similar revolutions, with a similarly limited pur-
pose and result, occurred at Sparta, Elis, and other
The Federal Union, 61
Greek cities. At Eome, by a like revolution,
the plebeians of the Capitoline and Aventine ac-
quired parallel rights of citizenship with the pa-
tricians of the original city on the Palatine ; but
this revolution, as we shall presently see, had dif-
ferent results, leading ultimately to the overthrow
of the city-system throughout the ancient world.
The deep-seated difference between the Teu-
tonic political system based on the shire and the
Grseco-Roman system based on the city is now, I
think, sufficiently apparent. Now from this fun-
damental difference have come two consequences
of enormous importance, — consequences of which
it is hardly too much to say that, taken together,
they furnish the key to the whole history of Eu-
ropean civilization as regarded purely from a po-
litical point of view.
The first of these consequences had no doubt a
very humble origin in the mere difference between
the shire and the city in territorial extent and in
density of population. When people live near
together it is easy for them to attend a town-
meeting, and the assembly by which public busi-
ness is transacted is likely to remain 2i j>r unary
asscinhhj^ in the true sense of the term. Ihit when
people are dispersed over a wide tract of country,
the i)riinary asbcmljly inevitably shrinks up into
62 Araerican Political Ideas.
an assembly of such persons as can best afford the
time and trouble of attending it, or who have the
strongest interest in going, or are most likely to
be listened to after they get there. Distance and
difficulty, and in early times danger too, keep
many people away. And though a shire is not a
wide tract of country for most purposes, and accord-
ing to modern ideas, it was nevertheless quite wide
enough in former times to bring about the result
I have mentioned. In the times before the E^or-
man conquest, if not before the completed union
of England under Edgar, the shire-mote or county
assembly, though in theory still a folk -mote or
primary assembly, had shrunk into what was vir-
tually a witenagemote or assembly of the most im-
portant persons in the county. But the several
townships, in order to keep their fair share of con-
trol over county affairs, and not wishing to leave
the matter to chance, sent to the meetings each its
representatives in the persons of the town-reeve
and four "discreet men." I believe it has not
been determined at what precise time this step
was taken, but it no doubt long antedates the
Norman conquest. It is mentioned by Professor
Stubbs as being already, in the reign of Henry III.,
a custom of immemorial antiquity.* It was one
* Stubbs, "Select Charters," 401.
The Federal Union, 63
of the greatest steps ever taken in the political
history of mankind. In these four discreet men
we have the forerunners of the two burghers from
each town who were summoned by Earl Simon to
the famous parliament of 12G5, as well as of the
two knights from each shire whom the king had
summoned eleven years before. In these four
discreet men sent to speak for their township in
the old county assembly, we have the germ of
institutions that have ripened into the House of
Commons and into the legislatures of modern king-
doms and republics. In the S3^stem of representa-
tion thus inaugurated lay the future possibility of
such gigantic political aggregates as the United
States of America.
In the ancient city, on the other hand, the ex-
treme compactness of the political structure made
representation unnecessary and prevented it from
beino: thou^^ht of in circumstances where it mi^^ht
have proved of immense value. In an aristocratic
Greek city, like Sparta, all the members of the rul-
ing class met together and voted in the assembly ;
in a democratic city, like Athens, all the free citi-
zens met and voted ; in each case the assembly
was primary and not represcntutive. The only
exception, in all Greek antiquity, is one which
emphatically proves the rule. The Amphiktyonic
64 American Political Ideas,
Council, an institution of prehistoric origin, con-
cerned mainly with religious affairs pertaining to
the worship of the Delphic Apollo, furnished a
precedent for a representative, and indeed for a
federal, assembly. Delegates from various Greek
tribes and cities attended it. The fact that with
such a suggestive precedent before their eyes the
Greeks never once hit upon the device of repre-
sentation, even in their attempts at framing fed-
eral unions, shows how thoroughly their whole
political training had operated to exclude such a
conception from their minds.
The second great consequence of the Grseco-
Koman city-system was linked in many ways with
this absence of the representative principle. In
Greece the formation of political aggregates high-
er and more extensive than the city was, until a
late date, rendered impossible. The good and bad
sides of this peculiar phase of civilization have
been often enough commented on by historians.
On the one hand the democratic assembly of such
an imperial city as Athens furnished a school of
political training superior to anything else that
the world has ever seen. It was something like
what the N^ew England town-meeting would be if
it were continually required to adjust complicated
questions of international polity, if it were carried
The Federal Union. 65
on in the very centre or point of confluence of all
contemporary streams of culture, and if it were in
tlie habit every few days of listening to statesmen
and orators like Hamilton or Webster, jurists like
Marshall, generals like Sherman, poets like Lowell,
historians like Parkman. Nothing in all history
has approached the higli - wrought intensity and
brilliancy of the political life of Athens.
On the other hand, the smallness of the inde-
pendent city, as a political aggregate, made it of
little or no use in diminishing the liability to per-
petual warfare which is the curse of all primitive
comuiunities. In a group of independent cities,
such as made up the Hellenic world, the tendency
to warfare is almost as strong, and the occasions
for warfare are almost as frequent, as in a con-
geries of mutually hostile tribes of barbarians.
There is something almost lurid in the sharpness
of contrast with which the wonderful height of
humanity attained by Hellas is set off against the
fierce barbarism which characterized the relations
of its cities to one another. It may be laid down
as a general rule that in an early state of society,
where the political aggregations are small, war-
fare is universal and cruel. PVom the intensity
of the jealousies and rivalries between adjacent
self-governing groups of men, nothing short of
66 American Political Ideas.
chronic warfare can result, until some principle
of union is evolved bj which disputes can be
settled in accordance with general principles ad-
mitted by all. Among peoples that have never
risen above the tribal stage of aggregation, such
as the American Indians, war is the normal con-
dition of things, and there is nothing fit to be
called jpeace^ — there are only truces of brief and
uncertain duration. Were it not for this there
would be somewhat less to be said in favour of
great states and kingdoms. As modern life grows
more and more complicated and interdependent,
the Great State subserves innumerable useful pur-
poses; but in the history of civilization its first
service, both in order of time and in order of im-
portance, consists in the diminution of the quanti-
ty of warfare and in the narrowing of its sphere.
For within the territorial limits of any great and
permanent state, the tendency is for warfare to
become the exception and peace the rule. In this
direction the political careers of the Greek cities
assisted the progress of civilization but little.
Under the conditions of Grseco-Roman civic life
there were but two practicable methods of form-
ing a great state and diminishing the quantity
of warfare. The one method was conquest with
incorporation^ the other method was federation^
The Federal Union. 67
Either one city raiglit conquer all the others and
endew their citizens with its own franchise, or all
the cities might give up part of their sovereignty
to a federal body which should have power to
keep the peace, and should represent the civilized
world of the time in its relations with outlying
barbaric peoples. Of these two methods, obvious-
ly the latter is much the more effective, but it pre-
supposes for its successful adoption a higher gen-
eral state of civilization than the former. Neither
method was adopted by the Greeks in their day
of greatness. The Spartan method of extending
its power was conquest witliout incorporation :
when Sparta conquered another Greek city, she
sent a hannost to govern it like a tyrant ; in other
words she virtually enslaved the subject city. The
efforts of Athens tended more in the direction of
a peaceful federalism. In the great Delian con-
federacy which developed into the maritime em-
pire of Athens, the yEgean cities were treated
as allies rather than subjects. As regards their
local affairs they were in no way interfered with,
and could they liave been represented in some
kind of a federal council at Athens, the course
of Grecian liistory might have been wonderfully
altered. As it was, they were all deprived of one
essential clement of sovereignty, — the ])Owcr of
68 American Political Ideas.
controlling their own military forces. Some of
them, as Chios and Mitjlene, furnished troops
at the demand of Athens; others maintained no
troops, but paid a fixed tribute to Athens in re-
turn for her protection. In either case they felt
shorn of part of their dignity, though otherwise
they had nothing to complain of ; and during the
Peloponnesian war Athens had to reckon with
their tendency to revolt as well as with her Do-
rian enemies. Such a confederation was naturally
doomed to speedy overthrow.
In the century following the death of Alexan-
der, in the closing age of Fellenic independence,
the federal idea appears in a much more advanced
stage of elaboration, though in a part of Greece
which had been held of little account in the great
days of Athens and Sparta. Between the Achaian
federation, framed in 274 e.g., and the United
States of America, there are some interesting
points of resemblance which have been elaborate-
ly discussed by Mr. Freeman, in his " History of
Federal Government." About the same time the
^tolian League came into prominence in the
north. Both these leagues were instances of true
federal government, and were not mere confedera-
tions ; that is, the central government acted directly
upon all the citizens and not merely upon the local
The Federal Union. G9
governments. Each of these leagues had for its
chief executive officer a General elected for one
year, with powers similar to those of an American
President. In each the supreme assembly was a
primary assembly at which every citizen from ev-
ery city of the league had a right to be present, to
speak, and to vote ; but as a natural consequence
these assemblies shrank into comparatively aristo-
cratic bodies. In JEtolia, which was a group of
mountain cantons similar to Switzerland, the fed-
eral union was more complete than in Achaia,
which was a group of cities. In Achaia cases oc-
curred in which a single city was allowed to deal
separately with foreign powers. Here, as in ear-
lier Greek history, the instinct of autonomy was
too powerful to admit of complete federation.
Yet the career of the Achaian League was not an
inglorious one. For nearly a century and a half it
gave the Peloponnesos a larger measure of order-
ly government than the country had ever known
before, without infringing upon local liberties. It
defied successfully the threats and assaults of Ma-
cedonia, and yielded at last only to the all-con(pier-
ing might of Kome.
Tlius in so far as Greece contributed anything
towards the formation of great and pacific political
aggregates, she did it through attempts '^i fcdcrcir
70 American Political Ideas.
tion. But in so low a state of political develop-
ment as that which prevailed throughout the Med-
iterranean world in pre-Christian times, the more
barbarous method of conquest with incorporation
was more likely to be successful on a great scale.
This was well illustrated in the history of Rome,
• — a civic community of the same generic type
with Sparta and Athens, but presenting specific
differences of the highest importance. The begin-
ings of Rome, unfortunately, are prehistoric. I
have often thought that if some beneficent fairy
could grant us the power of somewhere raising
the veil of oblivion which enshrouds the earliest
ages of Aryan dominion in Europe, there is no
place from which the historian should be more
glad to see it lifted than from Rome in the centu-
ries which saw the formation of the city, and which
preceded the expulsion of the kings. Even the
legends, which were uncritically accepted from the
days of Livy to those of our grandfathers, are pro-
vokingly silent upon the very points as to which
we would fain get at least a hint. This much is
plain, however, that in the embryonic stage of the
Roman commonwealth some obscure processes of
fusion or commingling went on. The tribal pop-
ulation of Rome was more heterogeneous than
that of the great cities of Greece, and its earliest
The Federal Union, 71
municipal religion seems to have been an assem-
blage of various tribal religions that had points
of contact with other tribal religions throughout
large portions of the Grgeco-Italic world. As M.
de Coulanges observes,* Rome was almost the
only city of antiquity which was not kept apart
from other cities by its religion. There was hard-
ly a people in Greece or Italy which it was re-
strained from admitting to participation in its mu-
nicipal rites.
However this may have been, it is certain that
Rome early succeeded in freeing itself from that
insuperable prejudice which elsewhere prevented
the ancient city from admitting aliens to a share
in its franchise. And in this victory over prime-
val political ideas lay the whole secret of Rome's
mighty career. The victory was not indeed com-
pleted until after the terrible Social War of B.C.
90, but it was begun at least four centuries earlier
with the admission of the plebeians. At the con-
summation of the conquest of Italy in li.c. 270
Roman burghership already extended, in varying
degrees of com])letenesi^, through the greater part
of Etruria and Campania, from the coast to the
mountains ; while all the rest of Italy was admitted
♦ "LaCitc Aati(iut',"4-il.
72 American Political Ideas.
to privileges for which ancient history had else-
where furnished no precedent. Hence the inva-
sion of Hannibal half a century later, even with
its stupendous victories of Thrasymene and Can-
nse, effected nothing toward detaching the Italian
subjects from their allegiance to Eome ; and herein
we have a most instructive contrast to the conduct
of the communities subject to Athens at several
critical moments of the Peloponnesian War. With
this consolidation of Italy, thus triumphantly de-
monstrated, the whole problem of the conquering
career of Kome was solved. All that came after-
wards was simply a corollary from this. The con-
centration of all the fighting power of the pen-
insula into the hands of the ruling city formed
a stronger political aggregate than anything the
world had as yet seen. It was not only proof
against the efforts of the greatest military genius
of antiquity, but whenever it was brought into
conflict with the looser organizations of Greece,
Africa, and Asia, or with the semi-barbarous tribes
of Spain and Gaul, the result of the struggle was
virtually predetermined. The universal dominion
of Rome was inevitable, so soon as the political
union of Italy had been accomplished. Among
the Romans themselves there were those who thor-
oughly understood this point, as we may see from
The Federal Union. 73
the interesting speech of the emperor Claudius in
favour of admitting: Gauls to the senate.
The benefits conferred upon the world bj the
universal dominion of Rome were of quite inesti-
mable value. First of these benefits, and (as it
were) the material basis of the others, was the pro-
longed peace that was enforced throughout large
portions of the world where chronic warfare had
liitherto prevailed. Thej9«a? romana has perhaps
been sometimes depicted in exaggerated colours ;
but as compared with all that had preceded, and
with all that followed, down to the beginning of
the nineteenth century, it deserved the encomiums
it has received. The second benefit was the min-
gling and mutual destruction of the primitive tri-
bal and municipal religions, thus clearing the way
for Christianity, — a step which, regarded from a
purely political point of view, was of immense im-
portance for the further consolidation of society
in Europe. The third benefit was the develop-
ment of the Iloman law into a great body of legal
precepts and principles leavened throughout with
ethical principles of universal applicability, and the
gradual substitution of this Koman law for the in-
numerable k)(;al usages of ancient communities.
Thus arose the idea of a common Christendom, of
a brotherhood of peu})lc3 associated both by com-
74 American Political Ideas.
mon beliefs regarding the unseen world and by
common principles of action in the daily affairs of
life. The common ethical and traditional basis
thus established for the future development of the
great nationalities of Europe is the most funda-
mental characteristic distinguishing modern from
ancient history.
While, however, it secured these benefits for
mankind for all time to come, the Eoman political
system in itself was one which could not possibly
endure. That extension of the franchise which
made Kome's conquests possible, was, after all, the
extension of a franchise which could only be prac-
tically enjoyed within the walls of the imperial
city itself. From first to last the device of repre-
sentation was never thought of, and from first to
last the Roman comitia remained a primary assem-
bly. The result was that, as the burgherhood en-
larged, the assembly became a huge mob as little
fitted for the transaction of public business as a
town-meeting of all the inhabitants of JS'ew York
would be. The functions which in Athens were
performed by the assembly were accordingly in
Eome performed largely by the aristocratic sen-
ate ; and for the conflicts consequently arising be-
tween the senatorial and the popular parties it was
difficult to find any adequate constitutional check.
Tlie Federal Union. 15
Outside of Italy, moreover, in the absence of a rep-
resentative system, the Koman government was
a despotism which, whether more or less oppres-
sive, could in the nature of things be nothing else
than a despotism. But nothing is more danger-
ous for a free people than the attempt to govern
a dependent people despotically. The bad govern-
ment kills out the good government as surely as
slave-labour destroys free-labour, or as a debased
currency drives out a sound currency. The exist-
ence of proconsuls in the provinces, with great ar-
mies at their beck and call, brought about such
results as might have been predicted, as soon as
the growing anarchy at home furnished a valid ex-
cuse for armed interference. In the case of tlie
Iwoman world, however, the result is not to be de-
plored, for it simply substituted a government tliat
was practicable under the circumstances for one
that had become demonstrably impracticable.
As regards the provinces the change from sen-
atorial to imperial government at Rome was a
great gain, inasmuch as it substituted an orderly
and responsible administration for irregular and
irrcspunsible extortion. For a long time, too, it
was no part of the im[)erial ])olicy to interfere with
local customs and privileges. IJut, in the absence
of a representative system, the centralizing ten-
76 American Political Ideas.
dencj inseparable from the position of such a
government proved to be irresistible. And the
strength of this centralizing tendency was further
enhanced by the military character of the govern-
ment which was necessitated by perpetual fron-
tier warfare against the barbarians. As year after
year went by, the provincial towns and cities were
governed less and less by their local magistrates,
more and more by prefects responsible to the em-
peror only. There were other co-operating causes,
economical and social, for the decline of the em-
pire ; but this change alone, which was consum-
mated by the time of Diocletian, was quite enough
to burn out the candle of Roman strength at both
ends. With the decrease in the power of the lo-
cal governments came an increase in the burdens
of taxation and conscription that were laid upon
them."^ And as " the dislocation of commerce and
industry caused by the barbarian inroads, and
the increasing demands of the central adminis-
tration for the payment of its countless officials
and the maintenance of its troops, all went to-
gether," the load at last became greater "than
human nature could endure." By the time of the
great invasions of the fifth century, local politi-
* Arnold, "Roman Provincial Administration," 237.
The Federal Union. 77
cal life had gone far towards extinction through-
out Horaan Europe, and the tribal organization of
the Teutons prevailed in the struggle simply be-
cause it had come to be politically stronger than
any organization that was left to oppose it.
We have now seen how the two great political
systems that were founded upon the Ancient City
both ended in failure, though both achieved enor-
mous and lastini]^ results. And we have seen how
largely both these political failures were due to
the absence of the principle of representation
from the public life of Greece and Home. The
chief problem of civilization, from the political
point of view, has always been how to secure con-
certed action among men on a great scale without
sacrificing local independence. The ancient his-
tory of Europe shows that it is not possible to
solve this problem without the aid of the princi-
ple of representation. Greece, until overcome by
external force, sacredly maintained local self-gov-
ernment, but in securing permanent concert of
action it was consi)icuously unsuccessful. Ivume
secured concert of action on a gigantic scale, and
transformed the thousand unconnected tribes and
cities it conquered into an organized European
Work), but in doing this it went far towards e.\-
tiiiguibhing local self-government. The advent of
78 American Political Ideas.
the Teutons upon the scene seems therefore to
have been necessary, if only to supply the indis-
pensable element without which the dilemma of
civilization could not be surmounted. The tur-
bulence of Europe during the Teutonic migra-
tions was so great and so long continued, that on
a superficial view one might be excused for re-
garding the good work of Rome as largely un-
done. And in the feudal isolation of effort and
apparent incapacity for combined action which
characterized the different parts of Europe after
the downfall of the Carolingian empire, it might
well have seemed that political society had reverted
towards a primitive type of structure. In truth,
however, the retrogradation was much slighter
than appeared on the surface. Feudalism itself,
with its curious net-work of fealties and obliga-
tions running through the fabric of society in
every direction, was by no means purely disinte-
grative in its tendencies. The mutual relations
of rival baronies w^ere by no means like those of
rival clans or tribes in pre -Roman days. The
central power of Rome, though no longer exert-
ed politically through curators and prefects, was
no less effective in the potent hands of the clergy
and in the traditions of the imperial jurisprudence
by which the legal ideas of mediaeval society were
The Federal Union. 79
60 strongly coloured. So powerful, indeed, was
this twofold influence of Korae, that in the later
Middle Ages, when the modern nationalities had
fairly taken shape, it was the capacity for local
self-government — in spite of all the Teutonic re-
inforcement it had had — that had suffered much
more than the capacity for national consolidation.
Among the great modern nations it was only Eng-
land — which in its political development had re-
mained more independent of the Roman law and
the Koman church than even the Teutonic father-
land itself — it was only England that came out of
the mediaeval crucible with its Teutonic self-gov-
ernment substantially intact. On the main-land
only two little spots, at the two extremities of the
old Teutonic world, had fared equally well. At
the mouth of the Ilhine the little Dutch commu-
nities were prepared to lead the attack in the ter-
rible battle for freedom with which the drama of
modern history was ushered in. In the impreg-
nable mountain fastnesses of upper Germany the
Swiss cantons had bid defiance alike to Austrian
tyrant and to Eurgundian invader, and had pre-
served in its purest form the rustic democracy
of tlieir Aryan forefathers. By a curious coinci-
dence, both these free peoples, in their efforts to-
wards national unity, were led to frame federal
80 American Political Ideas.
unions, and one of these political achievements is,
from the stand-point of universal history, of very
great significance. The old League of High Ger-
many, which earned immortal renown at Morgarten
and Sempach, consisted of German-speaking can-
tons only. But in the fifteenth century the League
won by force of arms a small bit of Italian terri-
tory about Lake Lugano, and in the sixteenth the
powerful city of Bern annexed the Burgundian
bishopric of Lausanne and rescued the free city
of Geneva from the clutches of the Duke of
Savoy. Other Burgundian possessions of Savoy
were seized by the canton of Freiburg ; and after
awhile all these subjects and allies were admitted
on equal terms into the confederation. The re-
sult is that modern Switzerland is made up of
what might seem to be most discordant and un-
manageable elements. Four languages — German,
French, Italian, and Ehgetian — are spoken within
the limits of the confederacy ; and in point of re-
ligion the cantons are sharply divided as Catholic
and Protestant. Yet in spite of all this, Switzer-
land is as thoroughly united in feeling as any
nation in Europe. To the German-speaking Cath-
olic of Altdorf the German Catholics of Bavaria
are foreigners, while the French-speaking Protes-
tants of Geneva are fellow-countrymen. Deeper
The Federal Union, 81
down even than these deep-seated differences of
speech and creed lies the feeling that comes from
the common possession of a political freedom that
is greater than that possessed by surrounding peo-
ples. Such has been the happy outcome of the
first attempt at federal union made by men of
Teutonic descent. Complete independence in
local affairs, when combined with adequate repre-
sentation in the federal council, has effected such
an intense cohesion of interests throughout the
nation as no centralized government, however cun-
ningly devised, could ever have secured.
Until the nineteenth century, however, the fed-
eral form of government had given no clear indi-
cation of its capacity for holding together great
bodies of men, spread over vast territorial areas,
in orderly and peaceful relations with one anoth-
er. The empire of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius
still remained the greatest known example of polit-
ical aggregation ; and men who argued from sim-
ple historic precedent without that power of anal}"-
zing precedents which the comparative method has
supplied, came not unnaturally to the conclusions
that great political aggregates have an inherent
tendency towards breaking up, and that great po-
liticiil aggregates cannot be maintained except by
a strongly -centralized administration and at the
82 American Political Ideas.
sacrifice of local self-government. A century ago
the very idea of a stable federation of forty power-
ful states, covering a territory nearly equal in area
to the whole of Europe, carried on by a republi-
can government elected by universal sufErage, and
guaranteeing to every tiniest village its full meed
of local independence, — the very idea of all this
would have been scouted as a thoroughly imprac-
ticable Utopian dream. And such scepticism would
have been quite justifiable, for European history
did not seem to afford any precedents upon which
such a forecast of the future could be logically
based. Between the various nations of Europe
there has certainly always existed an element of
political community, bequeathed by the Homan em-
pire, manifested during the Middle Ages in a com-
mon relationship to the Church, and in modern times
in a common adherence to certain uncodified rules
of international law, more or less imperfectly de-
fined and enforced. Between England and Spain,
for example, or between France and Austria, there
has never been such utter political severance as ex-
isted normally between Greece and Persia, or Home
and Carthage. But this community of political
inheritance in Europe, it is needless to say, falls
very far short of the degree of community implied
in a federal union; and so great is the diversity
The Federal Union. 83
of language and of creed, and of local historic de-
velopment with the deep-seated prejudices attend-
ant thereupon, that the formation of a European
federation could hardly be looked for except as
the result of mighty though quiet and subtle in-
fluences operating for a long time from without.
From what direction, and in what manner, such
an irresistible though perfectly pacific pressure is
likely to be exerted in the future, I shall endeav-
our to show in my next lecture. At present we
have to observe that the experiment of federal
union on a grand scale required as its conditions,
firsts a vast extent of unoccupied country which
could be settled without much warfare by men of
the same race and speech, and secondly^ on the
part of the settlers, a rich inheritance of political
training such as is afforded by long ages of self-
government. The Atlantic coast of North Amer-
ica, easily accessible to Europe, yet remote enough
to be freed from the political complications of the
old world, furnished the first of these conditions:
the history of the English people through fifty
generations furnished the second. It was through
English self-erovernment, as I ari^Mied in my first
lecture, that England alone, among the great na-
tions of Enrop(;, was able to found durable and
self-supporting colonies. 1 have now to add that
84 American Political Ideas.
it was only England, among all the great nations
of Europe, that could send forth colonists capable
of dealing successfully with the difficult problem
of forming such a political aggregate as the Unit-
ed States have become. For obviously the pres-
ervation of local self-government is essential to the
very idea of a federal union. Without the Town-
Meeting, or its equivalent in some form or other,
the Federal Union would become ipso facto con-
verted into a centralizing imperial government.
Should anything of this sort ever happen — should
American towns ever come to be ruled by prefects
appointed at Washington, and should American
States ever become like the administrative depart-
ments of France, or even like the counties of
England at the present day — then the time will
have come when men may safely predict the
break-up of the American political system by
reason of its overgrown dimensions and the diver-
sity of interests between its parts. States so un-
like one another as Maine and Louisiana and Cal-
ifornia cannot be held together by the stiff bonds
of a centralizing government. The durableness
of the federal union lies in its flexibility, and it is
this flexibility which makes it the only kind of
government, according to modern ideas, that is
permanently applicable to a whole continent. If
The Federal Union. 85
the United States were to-day a consolidated re-
public like France, recent ev^ents in California
might have disturbed the peace of the country.
But in the federal union, if California, as a state
sovereign within its own sphere, adopts a gro-
tesque constitution that aims at infringing on the
riglits of capitalists, the other states are not di-
rectly affected. They may disapprove, but they
have neither the right nor the desire to interfere.
Meanwhile the laws of nature quietly operate to
repair the blunder. Capital Hows away from Cal-
ifornia, and the business of the state is damaged,
until presently tlie ignorant demagogues lose fa-
vour, the silly constitution becomes a dead-letter,
and its formal repeal begins to be talked of. Kot
the smallest ripple of excitement disturbs the pro-
found peace of the country at large. It is in this
complete independence that is preserved by every
state, in all matters save those in which the feder-
al principle itself is concerned, that we find the
surest guaranty of the permanence of the Ameri-
can political system. Obviously no race of men,
save the race to which habits of self-government
and the skilful use of political representation had
Come to be as second nature, could ever have suc-
ceeded in founding such a system.
Yet even l)y men of English race, working with*
86 American Political Ideas.
out let or hinderance from any foreign source, and
with the better part of a continent at their dis-
posal for a field to work in, so great a political
problem as that of the American Union has not
been solved without much toil and trouble. The
great puzzle of civilization — how to secure perma-
nent concert of action without sacrificing indepen-
dence of action — is a puzzle which has taxed the
ingenuity of Americans as well as of older Aryan
peoples. In the year 1Y88 when our Federal Union
was completed, the problem had already occupied
the minds of American statesmen for a century
and a half, — that is to say, ever since the English
settlement of Massachusetts. In 16-13 a New Eng-
land confederation was formed between Massachu-
setts and Connecticut, together with Plymouth
since merged in Massachusetts and JN^ew Haven
since merged in Connecticut. The confederation
was formed for defence against the French in Can-
ada, the Dutch on the Hudson river, and the In-
dians. But owing simply to the inequality in the
sizes of these colonies — Massachusetts more than
outweighing the other three combined — the prac-
tical working of this confederacy was never very
successful. In 1754, just before the outbreak of
the great war which drove the French from Amer-
ica, a general Congress of the colonies was held at
The Federal Union. 87
Albany, and a comprehensive scheme of union
was proposed by Benjamin Franklin, but nothing
came of the project at that time. The commercial
rivalry between the colonies, and tlieir disputes
over boundary lines, were then quite like the sim-
ilar phenomena with which Europe had so long
been familiar. In 1756 Georgia and South Caro-
lina actually came to blows over the navigation of
the Savannah river. The idea that the thirteen
colonies could ever overcome their mutual jeal-
ousies so far as to unite in a single political body,
was received at that time in England with a deri-
sion like that which a proposal for a permanent
federation of European States would excite in
many minds to-day. It was confidently predicted
that if the common allegiance to the British crown
were once withdrawn, the colonies would forth-
with proceed to destroy themselves with interne-
cine war. In fact, however, it was the shaking off
of allegiance to the British crown, and the com-
mon trials and suilorings of the war of indepen-
dence, that at last welded the colonies together
and made a federal union possible. As it was,
the union was consummated only by degrees. By
the Articles of Confederation, agreed on by Con-
gress iu 1777 but not adopted by all the States
until 17S1, the federal government acted only upon
88 American Political Ideas.
the several state governments and not directly
upon individuals; there was no federal judiciary
for the decision of constitutional questions aris-
ing out of the relations between the states ; and
the Congress was not provided with any efficient
means of raising a revenue or of enforcing its leg-
islative decrees. Under such a government the
difficulty of insuring concerted action was so great
that, but for the transcendent personal qualities
of Washington, the bungling mismanagement of
the British ministry, and the timely aid of the
French fleet, the war of independence would most
likely have ended in failure. After the indepen-
dence of the colonies was acknowledged, the for-
mation of a more perfect union was seen to be the
only method of securing peace and making a na-
tion which should be respected by foreign powers ;
and so in 1788, after much discussion, the present
Constitution of the United States was adopted, —
a constitution which satisfied very few people at
the time, and which was from beginning to end a
series of compromises, yet which has proved in its
working a masterpiece of political wisdom.
The first great compromise answered to the ini-
tial difficulty of securing approximate equality of
weight in the federal councils between states of
nn equal size. The simple device by which this
The Federal Union. 89
difficulty was at last surmounted has proved effect-
ual, although the inequalities between the states
have greatly increased. To-day the population of
New York is more than eighty times that of Ne-
vada. In area the state of Rhode Island is small-
er than Montenegro, while the state of Texas is
larger than the Austrian empire with Bavaria and
Wiirtemberg thrown in. Yet New York and Ne-
vada, Rhode Island and Texas, each send two sen-
ators to Washington, while on the other hand in
the lower house each state has a number of rep-
resentatives proportioned to its population. The
upper house of Congress is therefore a federal
while the lower house is a national body, and the
government is brought into direct contact with
the people without endangering the equal rights
of the several states.
The second great compromise of the American
constitution consists in the series of arrangements
by which sovereignty is divided between the states
and the federal fj^overnment. In all domestic Icii:-
islation and jurisdiction, civil and criminal, in all
matters relating to tenure of property, marriage
and divorce, the fuUilment of contracts and the
punishment of malefactors, each separate state is
as completely a sovereign state as France or Great
Britain. In speaking to a British audience a coii»
90 American Political Ideas.
Crete illustration may not be superfluous. If a
criminal is condemned to death in Pennsylvania,
the royal prerogative of pardon resides in the
Governor of Pennsylvania : the President of the
United States has no more authority in the case
than the Czar of Russia. Kor in civil cases can
an appeal lie from the state courts to the Supreme
Court of the United States, save vrhere express
provision has been made in the Constitution.
Within its own sphere the state is supreme. The
chief attributes of sovereignty with which the sev-
eral states have parted are the coining of money,
the carrying of mails, the imposition of tariff dues,
the granting of patents and copyrights, the dec-
laration of war, and the maintenance of a navy.
The regular army is supported and controlled by
the federal government, but each state maintains
its own militia which it is bound to use in case of
internal disturbance before calling upon the cen-
tral government for aid. In time of war, however,
these militias come under the control of the cen-
tral government. Thus every American citizen
lives under two governments, the functions of
which are clearly and intelligibly distinct.
To insure the stability of the federal union thus
formed, the Constitution created a "system of
United States courts extending throughout the
Tlie Federal Union. 91
states, empowered to define the boundaries of
federal authority, and to enforce its decisions by
federal power." This omnipresent federal judi-
ciary was undoubtedly the most important creation
of the statesmen who framed the Constitution.
The closely-knit relations which it established be-
tween the states contributed powerfully to the
growth of a feeling of national solidarity through-
out the whole country. The United States to-
day cling together with a coherency far greater
than the coherency of any ordinary federation or
league. Yet the primary aspect of the federal
Constitution was undoubtedly that of a perma-
nent league, in which each state, while retaining
its domestic sovereignty intact, renounced forever
its right to make war upon its neighbours and
relegated its international interests to the care
of a central council in w^hich all the states were
alike represented and a central tribunal endowed
with purely judicial functions of interpretation.
It was the first attempt in the history of the world
to apply on a grand scale to the relations between
states the same legal methods of procedure which,
as long applied in all civilized countries to the re-
lations between individuals, have rendered private
warfare obsolete. And it was so far successful
that, during a period of seventy-two years in which
92 America/n Political Ideas.
the United States increased fourfold in extent,
tenfold in population, and more than tenfold in
wealth and power, the federal union maintained
a state of peace more profound than the 2><^x ro-
mana.
Twenty years ago this unexampled state of peace
was suddenly interrupted by a tremendous war,
which in its results, however, has served only to
bring out with fresh emphasis the pacific implica-
tions of federalism. With the eleven revolted
states at first completely conquered and then re-
instated with full rights and privileges in the fed-
eral union, with their people accepting in good
faith the results of the contest, with their leaders
not executed as traitors but admitted acrain to seats
in Congress and in the Cabinet, and with all this
accomplished without any violent constitutional
changes, — I think we may fairly claim that the
strength of the pacific implications of federalism
has been more strikingly demonstrated than if
there had been no war at all. Certainly the world
never beheld such a spectacle before. In my next
and concluding lecture I shall return to this point
while summing up the argument and illustrating
the part played by the English race in the general
history of civilization.
III.
''MANIFEST destiny:'
Among the legends of our late Civil "War there
is a storj of a dinner-party given by the Ameri-
cans residing in Paris, at which were propounded
sundry toasts concerning not so much the past and
present as the expected glories of the great Amer-
ican nation. In the general character of these
toasts geographical considerations were very prom-
inent, and the principal fact which seemed to oc-
cupy the minds of the speakers was the unprece-
dented bigness of our country. " Here's to the
United States," said the first speaker, " bounded
on the north by British America, on the south by
the Gulf of Mexico, on tlie east by the Athmtic,
and on the we^ by the Pacific, Ocean." " But,"
said the second speaker, " this is far too limited a
view of the subject: in assigning our boundaries
we must look to the great and glorious future
which is prescribed for us by the Manifest Destiny
of the Anglo-Saxon Race. Here's to the United
States, — bounded on the north by the Morth Pole,
94 American Political Ideas.
on the south by the South Pole, on the east by the
rising and on the west by the setting sun." Em-
pliatic applause greeted this aspiring prophecy.
But here arose the third speaker — a very serious
gentleman from the Far West. " If we are going,"
said this truly patriotic American, " to leave the
historic past and present, and take our manifest
destiny into the account, why restrict ourselves
within the narrow limits assigned by our fellow-
countryman who has just sat down ? I give you
the United States, — bounded on the north by the
Aurora Borealis, on the south by the precession of
the equinoxes, on the east by the primeval chaos,
and on the west by the Day of Judgment !"
I offer this anecdote at the outset by way of
self-defence, inasmuch as I shall by and by have
myself to introduce some considerations concern-
ing the future of our country, and of what some
people, without the fear of Mr. Freeman before
their eyes, call the "Anglo-Saxon" race; and if it
should happen to strike you that my calculations
are unreasonably large, I hope you will remember
that they are quite modest after all, when com-
pared with some others.
The " manifest destiny " of the " Anglo-Saxon "
race and the huge dimensions of our country are
favourite topics with Fourth-of-July orators, but
i
^^Manifest Destiny P 95
they are none the less interesting on that account
when considered from the point of view of the his-
torian. / To be a citizen of a great and growing
state, or to belong to one of the dominant races
of the world, is no doubt a legitimate source of
patriotic pride, though there is perhaps an equal
justification for such a feeling in being a citizen
of a tiny state like Holland, which, in spite of
its small dimensions, has nevertheless achieved so
much, — fighting at one time the battle of freedom
for the world, producing statesmen like AVilliara
and Barneveldt, generals like Maurice, scholars
like Erasmus and Grotius, and thinkers like Spi-
noza, and taking the lead even to-day in the study
of Christianity and in the interpretation of the
Bible. But my course in the present lecture is
determined by historical or philosophical ratlier
than by patriotic interest, and I shall endeavour to
characterize and group events as impartial!}^ as if
my home were at Leyden in the Old World in-
stead of Cambridge in the Kew.
First of all, I shall take sides with Mr. Freeman
in oschewini; altoi^cther tlie word " An<rlo-Saxon.''
The term is sufficiently absurd and misleading as
applied in England to the Old-Englisli speech of
our forefathers, or to that portion of English his-
tory which is included betwecD the liftli and the
96 American Political Ideas.
eleventh centuries. But in America it is frequent-
ly used, not indeed by scholars, but by popular
writers and speakers, in a still more loose and slov-
enly way. In the war of independence our great-
great-grandfathers, not yet having ceased to think
of themselves as Englishmen, used to distinguish
themselves as "Continentals," while the king's
troops were known as the " British." The quaint
term " Continental " long ago fell into disuse, ex-
cept in the slang phrase " not worth a Continen-
tal" which referred to the debased condition of
our currency at the close of the Revolutionary
War; but "American" and "British" might still
serve the purpose sufficiently whenever it is nec-
essary to distinguish between the two great Eng-
lish nationalities. The term " English," however,
is so often used with sole reference to people and
things in England as to have become in some meas-
ure antithetical to "American;" and when it is
found desirable to include the two in a general
expression, one often hears in America the term
"Anglo-Saxon " colloquially emploj^ed for this pur-
pose. A more slovenly use of language can hard-
ly be imagined. Such a compound term as "An-
glo-American " might perhaps be logically defensi-
ble, but that has already become restricted to the
English-descended inhabitants of tlie United States
''Mmitfest Destiny.''^ 97
and Canada alone, in distinction from Spanish
Americans and red Indians. It is never so used
as to include Enojlishmen. Kefrainino^ from all
such barbarisms, I prefer to call the English race
by the name which it has always applied to itself,
from the time when it inhabited the little district
of Angeln on the Baltic coast of Sleswick down to
the time when it had begun to spread itself over
three great continents. It is a race which has
shown a rare capacity for absorbing slightly for-
eign elements and moulding them into conformity
with a political type that was first wrought out
through centuries of effort on British soil; and
this capacity it has shown perhaps in a heightened
degree in the peculiar circumstances in which it
lias been placed in America. The American has
absorbed considerable quantities of closely kindred
European blood, but he is rapidly assimilating it
all, and in his political habits and aptitudes he re-
mains as thoroughly English as his forefathers in
the days of De Montfort, or EPampdcn, or Wash-
ington. Premising this, we may go on to consider
eume aspects of the work which the English race
has done and is doing in the world, and we need
not feel discouraged if, in order to do justice to
the subject, we have to take our start far back in
ancient history. We shall begin, it may be said,
98 American Political Ideas.
somewhere near the primeval chaos, and though
we shall indeed stop short of the day of judgment,
we shall hope at all events to reach the millen-
nium.
Our eloquent friends of the Paris dinner-party
seem to have been strongly impressed with the
excellence of enormous political aggregates. We,
too, approaching the subject from a different point
of view, have been led to see how desirable it is
ihat self-governing groups of men should be en-
abled to work together in permanent harmony and
on a great scale. In this kind of political integra-
tion the work of civilization very largely consists.
We have seen how in its most primitive form po-
litical society is made up of small self-governing
groups that are perpetually at war with one an-
other. Now the process of change which we call
civilization means quite a number of things. But
there is no doubt that on its political side it means
primarily the gradual substitution of a state of
peace for a state of war. This change is the con-
dition precedent for all the other kinds of improve-
ment that are connoted by such a term as " civili-
zation." Manifestly the development of industry
is largely dependent upon the cessation or restric-
tion of warfare ; and furthermore, as the industrial
phase of civilization slowly supplants the military
^^ Manifest Destiny ^"^ 99
phase, men's characters undergo, though very slow-
ly, a corresponding change. Men become less in-
clined to destroy life or to inflict pain ; or — to use
the popular terminology which happens here to
coincide precisely with that of the Doctrine of
Evolution — they become less brutal and more
humane. Obviously then the prime feature of the
process called civilization is the general diminu-
tion of warfare. But we have seen that a general
diminution of warfare is rendered possible only
by the union of small political groups into larger
groups that are kept together by community of
interests, and that can adjust their mutual rela-
tions by legal discussion without coming to blows.
In the preceding lecture we considered this proc*
ess of political integration as variously exempli-
fied by communities of Hellenic, of Roman, and
of Teutonic race, and we saw how manifold were
the difficulties which the process had to encoun-
ter. We saw how the Teutons — at least in Switzer-
land, England, and America — had succeeded best
through the retention of local self-government com-
bined with central representation. AVe saw how
the Romans failed of ultimate success because by
weakening self-government they weakened that
community of interest which is essential to the
permanence of a great political aggregate. Wo
100 American Political Ideas.
saw how the Greeks, after passing through theii
most glorious period in a state of chronic warfare,
had begun to achieve considerable success in form-
ing a pacific federation when their independent
career was suddenly cut short bj the Eoman con-
queror.
This last example introduces us to a fresh con-
sideration, of very great importance. It is not
only that every progressive community has had to
solve, in one way or another, the problem of se-
curing permanent concert of action without sacri-
ficing local independence of action ; but while en-
gaged in this difficult work the community has
had to defend itself against the attacks of other
communities. In the case just cited, of the con-
quest of Greece by Rome, little harm was done
perhaps. But under different circumstances im-
mense damage may have been done in this way,
and the nearer we go to the beginnings of civiliza-
tion the greater the danger. At the dawn of his-
tory we see a few brilliant points of civilization
surrounded on every side by a midnight blackness
of barbarism. In order that the pacific communi-
ty may be able to go on doing its work, it must be
strong enough and warlike enough to overcome
its barbaric neighbours who have no notion what-
ever of keeping peace. This is another of the
^^ Manifest Destiny!''' 101
seeming paradoxes of the history of civilization,
that for a very long time the possibility of peace
can be guaranteed only through war. Obviously
the permanent peace of the world can be secured
only through the gradual concentration of the pre-
ponderant military strength into the hands of the
most pacific communities. With infinite toil and
trouble this point has been slowly gained by man-
kind, through the circumstance that the very same
political aggregation of small primitive communi-
ties which makes them less disposed to quarrel
among themselves tends also to make them more
than a match for the less coherent groups of their
more barbarous neighbours.l The same concert of
action which tends towards internal harmony tends
also towards external victory, and both ends are
promoted by the co-operation of the same sets of
causes. But for a long time all the political prob-
lems of the civilized world were complicated by
the fact that the community had to fight for its
life. We seldom stop to reflect upon the immi-
nent danger from outside attacks, whether from
surrounding barbarism or from neighbouring civ-
ilizations of lower type, amid which the rich and
hii'h-toned civilizations of Greece and Eome were
developed. When the king of Persia undertook
to reduce Greece to the condition of a Persian sat-
102 Ainerican Political Ideas,
rapj, there was imminent danger that all the enor-
mous fruition of Greek thought in the intellectual
life of the European world might have been nipped
in the bud. And who can tell how often, in pre-
historic times, some little gleam of civilization,
less bright and steady than this one had become,
may have been quenched in slavery or massacre ?
The greatest work which the Romans performed
in the world was to assume the aggressive against
menacing barbarism, to subdue it, to tame it, and
to enlist its brute force on the side of law and or-
der. This was a murderous work, and in doing
it the Romans became excessively cruel, but it had
to be done by some one before you could expect
to have great and peaceful civilizations like our
own. The warfare of Rome is by no means ade-
quately explained by the theory of a deliberate im-
moral policy of aggression, — "infernal," I believe,
is the stronger adjective which Dr. Draper uses.
The aggressive wars of Rome were largely dictated
by just such considerations as those which a cen-
tury ago made it necessary for the English to put
down the raids of the Scotch Highlanders, and
which have since made it necessary for Russia to
subdue the Caucasus. It is not easy for a turbu-
lent community to live next to an orderly one
without continually stirring up frontier disturb-
^'-Manifest DestinyP 103
ances which call for stern repression from the or-
derly community. Such considerations go far to-
wards explaining the military history of the Eo-
mans, and it is a history with which, on the whole,
we ought to sympathize. In its European relations
that history is the history of the moving of the
civilized frontier northward and eastward against
the disastrous encroachments of barbarous peoples.
This great movement has, on the whole, been stead-
ily kept up, in spite of some apparent fluctuation
in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Cliristian era,
and it is still going on to-day. It was a great gain
for civilization when the Eomans overcame the
Keltiberians of Spain, and taught them good man-
ners and the Latin language, and made it for their
interest hereafter to fight against barbarians. The
third European peninsula was thus won over to
the side of law and order. Danger now remained
on the north. The Gauls had once sacked the city
of Rome ; hordes of Teutons had lately menaced
the very heart of civilization, but had been over-
thrown in murderous combat by Caius Marius;
another great Teutonic movement, led by Ariovis-
tus, now threatened to precipitate tlie whole bar-
baric force of south-eastern Ciaul upon the civil-
ized world; and so it occurred to the prescient
genius of Caesar to be beforehand and conquer
104 American Political Ideas.
Gaul, and enlist all its giant barbaric force an tbe
side of civilization. Tbis great work was as tbor-
ougbly done as anjtbing tbat was ever done in
buman bistory, and we ougbt to be tbankful to
Csesar for it every day tbat we live. Tbe frontier
to be defended against barbarism was now moved
away up to tbe Ebine, and was very mucb sbort-
ened ; but above all, tbe Gauls were made to feel
tbemselves to be Eomans. Tbeir country became
one of tbe cbief strongbolds of civilization and of
Cbristianity; and wben tbe frigbtful sbock of bar-
barism came — tbe most formidable blow tbat bas
ever been directed by barbaric brute force against
European civilization — it was in Gaul tbat it was
repelled and tbat its force was spent. At tbe be-
ginning of tbe fiftb century an enormous borde of
yellow Mongolians, known as Huns, poured down
into Europe witb avowed intent to burn and de-
stroy all tbe good work wbicb Eome bad wrougbt
in tbe world ; and terrible was tbe bavoc tbey ef-
fected in tbe course of fifty years. If Attila bad
carried his point, it bas been tbougbt tbat tbe
work of European civilization might have had to
be begun over again. But near Chalons-on-the-
Marne, in tbe year 451, in one of the most obsti-
nate struggles of wbicb bistory preserves tbe rec-
ord, tbe career of tbe " Scourge of God " was ar«
^'Manifest Destiny''' 105
rested, and mainly by the prowess of Gauls and of
Visigoths whom the genius of Home had tamed.
That was the last day on which barbarism was able
to contend with civilization on equal terms. It
was no doubt a critical day for all future history ;
and for its favourable issue we must largely thank
the policy adopted by Caisar five centuries before.
By the end of the eighth century the great power
of the Franks had become enlisted in behalf of
law and order, and the Roman throne was occu-
pied by a Frank, — the ablest man who had appear-
ed in the world since Ctesar's death ; and one of
the worthiest achievements of Charles the Great
was the conquest and conversion of pagan Ger-
many, which threw the frontier against barbarism
eastward as far as the Oder, and made it so much
the easier to defend Europe. In the thirteenth
century this frontier was permanently carried for-
ward to the Vistula by the Teutonic Knights who,
under commission from the emperor Frederick II.,
overcame the heathen Prussians and Lithuanians;
and now it began to be shown how greatly the
military strengtli of Europe had increased. In this
same century Batu, the grandson of Jinghis Khan,
came down into Europe witli a horde of more than
a million Mongols, and tried to repeat the experi-
ment of Attihi. Batu penetrated as far as Silesia,
106 American Political Ideas.
and won a great battle at Liegnitz in 12il, bat in
spite of his victory he had to desist from the task
of conquering Europe. Since the fifth century the
physical power of the civilized world had grown
immensely ; and the impetus of this barbaric in-
vasion was mainly spent upon Russia, the growth
of which it succeeded in retarding for more than
two centuries. Finally since the sixteenth century
we have seen the Russians, redeemed from their
Mongolian oppressors, and rich in many of the
elements of a vigorous national life, — we have
seen the Russians resume the aggressive in this
conflict of ages, beginning to do for Central Asia
in some sort what the Romans did for Europe.
The frontier against barbarism, which Caesar left
at the Rhine, has been carried eastward to the Vol-
ga, and is now advancing even to the Oxus. The
question has sometimes been raised whether it
would be possible for European civilization to be
seriously threatened by any future invasion of bar-
barism or of some lower type of civilization. By
barbarism certainly not: all the nomad strength
of Mongolian Asia would throw itself in vain
against the insuperable barrier constituted by Rus-
sia. But I have heard it quite seriously suggested
that if some future Attila or Jinghis were to wield
as a unit the entire military strength of the four
^''Manifest Destiny^ 107
hundred millions of Chinese, possessed with some
Buddenly-eonceived idea of conquering the world,
even as Omar and Abderrahman wielded as a unit
the newly-welded power of the Saracens in the
seventh and eighth centuries, then perhaps a stag-
gering blow might yet be dealt against European
civilization. I will not waste precious time in con-
sidering this imaginary case, further than to re-
mark that if the Chinese are ever going to try any-
thing of this sort, they cannot afford to wait very
long ; for within another century, as we shall pres-
ently see, their very numbers will be surpassed by
those of the English race alone. By that time all
the elements of military predominance on the
earth, including that of simple numerical superi-
ority, will have been gathered into the hands not
merely of men of European descent in general,
but more specifically into the hands of the off-
spring of the Teutonic tribes who conquered Brit-
ain in the fifth century. So far as the relations of
civilization with barbarism are concerned to-day,
the only serious question is by what process of
modification the barbarous races are to maintain
their foothold upon the earth at all. While onco
Buch people threatened the very continuance of
civilization, they now exist only on sufferance.
In this brief survey of tiie advancing frontier of
108 America/n Political Ideas.
European civilization, I have said nothing about
the danger that has from time to time been threat-
ened by the followers of Mohammed, — of the over-
throw of the Saracens in Gaul by the grandfather
of Charles the Great, or their overthrow at Con-
stantinople by the image-breaking Leo, of the great
mediaeval Crusades, or of the mischievous but fu-
tile career of the Turks. For if I were to attempt
to draw this outline with anything like complete-
ness, I should have no room left for the conclusion
of my argument. Considering my position thus
far as sufficiently illustrated, let us go on to con-
template for a moment some of the effects of all
this secular turmoil upon the political develop-
ment of the progressive nations of Europe. I
think we may safely lay it down, as a large and
general rule, that all this prodigious warfare re-
quired to free the civilized world from peril of
barbarian attack served greatly to increase the dif-
ficulty of solving the great initial problem of civ-
ilization. In the first place, the turbulence thus
arising was a serious obstacle to the formation of
closely-coherent political aggregates ; as we see ex-
emplified in the terrible convulsions of the fifth
and sixth centuries, and again in the ascendency
acquired by the isolating features of feudalism be-
tween the time of Charles the Great and the time
^''Manifest De^tinyP 109
of Louis YI. of France. In the second place, this
perpetual turbulence was a serious obstacle to the
preservation of popular liberties. It is a very dif-
ficult thing for a free people to maintain its free
constitution if it has to keep perpetually fighting
for its life. The "one-man-power," less fit for
carrying on the peaceful pursuits of life, is sure to
be brought into the foreground in a state of end-
less warfare. It is a still more difiicult thing for
a free people to maintain its free constitution when
it undertakes to govern a dependent people des-
potically, as has been wont to happen when a por-
tion of the barbaric world has been overcome and
annexed to the civilized world. Under the weight
of these two difiiculties combined, the free institu-
tions of the ancient Romans succumbed, and their
government gradually passed into the hands of a
kind of close corporation more despotic than any-
thing else of the sort that Europe has ever seen.
This despotic character — this tendency, if you will
pardon the phrase, towards the Asiaticizat'wn of
European life — was continued by inheritance in
the Human Church, the inlhicnce of which was
beneficent so long as it constituted a wholesome
check to the isolating tendencies of feudalism, but
began to become noxious the moment these ten-
dencies yielded to the centralizing monarchical ten-
110 A^nerican Political Ideas,
dency in nearly all parts of Europe. The asiati-
cizing tendency of Roman political life had be-
come so powerful by the fourth century, and has
since been so powerfully propagated through the
Church, that we ought to be glad that the Teu-
tons came into the empire as masters rather than
as subjects. As the Germanic tribes got posses-
sion of the government in one part of Europe after
another, they brought with them free institutions
again. The political ideas of the Goths in Spain,
of the Lombards in Italy, and of the Franks and
Burgundians in Gaul, were as distinctly free as
those of the Angles in Britain. But as the out-
come of the long and uninterrupted turmoil of the
Middle Ages, society throughout the continent of
Europe remained predominantly military in type,
and this fact greatly increased the tendency to-
wards despotism which was bequeathed by Rome.
After the close of the thirteenth century the whole
power of the Church was finally thrown into the
scale against the liberties of the people; and as the
result of all these forces combined, we find that at
the time when America was discovered govern-
ment was hardening into despotism in all the great
countries of Europe except England. Even in
England the tendency towards despotism had be-
gun to become quite conspicuous after the whole-
''^Manifest DestinyP 111
sale slaughter of the great barons and the confis-
cation of their estates which took place in the
Wars of the Roses. The constitutional history of
England during the Tudor and Stuart periods is
mainly the history of the persistent effort of the
English sovereign to free himself from constitu-
tional checks, as his brother sovereigns on the con-
tinent were doing. But how different the result !
How enormous the political difference between
William III. and Louis XIY., compared with the
difference between Henry YIII. and Francis I. !
The close of the seventeenth century, which marks
the culmination of the asiaticizing tendency in
Europe, saw despotism both political and religious
firmly established in France and Spain and Italy,
and in half of Germany ; while the rest of Ger-
many seemed to have exhausted itself in the at-
tempt to throw off the incubus. But in England
this same epoch saw freedom both political and rc-
liLCious established on so firm a foundation as never
again to be shaken, never again with impunity to
be threatened, so long as the language of Locke
and Milton and Sydney shall remain a living
speech on the lips of men. Now this wonderful
difference })etweeii the career of popular liberty
in England and on the Continent was due no doubt
to a complicated variety of causes, one ur two of
112 American Political Ideas. i
which I have already sought to point out. In my
first lecture I alluded to the curious combination
of circumstances which prevented anything like a
severance of interests between the upper and the
lower ranks of society ; and something was also
said about the feebleness of the grasp of imperial
Eome upon Britain compared with its grasp upon
the continent of Europe. But what I wish now
to point out — since we are looking at the military
aspect of the subject — is the enormous advantage
of what we may call the strategic position of Eng-
land in the long mediseval struggle between civ-
ilization and barbarism. In Professor Stubbs's ad-
mirable collection of charters and documents illus-
trative of English history, we read that " on the
6th of July [1261] the whole force of the country
was summoned to London for the 3d of Au£:ust,
to resist the army which was coming from France
under the queen and her son Edmund. The iii-
vading fleet was prevented hy the weather from
sailing until too late in the season. . . . The papal
legate, Guy Foulquois, who soon after became
Clement lY., threatened the barons with excom-
munication, but the bull containing the sentence
was taken by the men of Dover as soon as it ar-
rived, and was thrown into the sea."* As I read
* Stubbs, " Select Charters." 401.
'"''Manifest Destiny^ 113
this, I think of the sturdy men of Connecticut
beating the drum to prevent the reading of the
royal order of James II. depriving the colony of
the control of its own militia, and feel with pride
that the indomitable spirit of English liberty is
alike indomitable in every land where men of
English race have set their feet as masters. But
as the success of Americans in withstanding the
unconstitutional pretensions of the crown was
greatly favoured by the barrier of the ocean, so the
success of Englishmen in defying the enemies of
their freedom has no doubt been greatly favoured
by the barrier of the British channel. The war
between Henry III. and the barons was an event
in English history no less critical than the war be-
tween Charles I. and the parliament four centu-
ries later; and British and Americans alike have
every reason to be thankful that a great French
army was not able to get across the channel in
August, 12G4. Nor was this the only time when
the insular position of England did goodly service
in maintaining its liberties and its internal peace.
We cannot forget how Lord Iloward of Etiingham,
aided also by the weather, defeated the armada that
boasted itself "invincible," sent to strangle free-
dom in its chos(,'n lioinc l)y the most execrable and
ruthless tyrant that Europe has ever seen, a tyrant
11-i American Political Ideas.
whose victory would have meant not simply the
usurpation of the English crown but the establish-
ment of the Spanish Inquisition at Westminster
Ilall. Nor can we forget with what longing eyes
the Corsican barbarian who wielded for mischief
the forces of France in 1805 looked across from
Boulogne at the shores of the one European land
that never in word or deed granted him homage.
But in these latter days England has had no need
of stormy weather to aid the prowess of the sea-
kings who are her natural defenders. It is impos-
sible for the thoughtful student of history to walk
across Trafalgar Square, and gaze on the image of
the mightiest naval hero that ever lived, on the
summit of his lofty column and guarded by the
royal lions, looking down towards the government-
house of the land that he freed from the dread
of Napoleonic invasion and towards that ancient
church wherein the most sacred memories of Eng-
lish talent and English toil are clustered together,
— it is impossible, I say, to look at this, and not
admire both the artistic instinct that devised so
happy a symbolism, and the rare good -fortune
of our Teutonic ancestors in securing a territorial
position so readily defensible against the assaults
of despotic powers. But it Avas not merely in the
simple facility of warding off external attack that
^'Manifest Destiny!'^ 115
the insular position of England was so serviceable.
This ease in warding off external attack had its
most marked effect upon the internal polity of
the nation. It never became necessary for the
English government to keep up a great standing
army. For purposes of external defence a navy
was all-sufficient; and there is this practical differ-
ence between a permanent army and a permanent
navy. Both are originally designed for purposes
of external defence; but the one can readily be
used for purposes of internal oppression, and the
other cannot. Nobody ever heard of a navy put-
ting up an empire at auction and knocking down
the throne of the world to a Didius Julianus.
When, therefore, a country is effectually screened
by water from external attack, it is screened in a
way that permits its normal political development
to go on internally without those manifold mili-
tary hinderances that have ordinarily been so ob-
structive in the history of civilization. Hence we
not only see why, after the Xorman Conquest had
operated to increase its unity and its strength,
England enjoyed a far greater amount of security
and was far more peaceful than any other country
in Europe; but we also see why society never
assumed tlie military type in England which it
assumed upon the continent; we see how it was
116 American Political Ideas.
that the bonds of feudalism were far looser here
than elsewhere, and therefore how it happened
that nowhere else was tlie condition of the com-
mon people so good politically. We now begin
to see, moreover, how thoroughly Professor Stubbs
and Mr. Freeman are justified in insisting upon
the fact that the political institutions of the Ger-
mans of Tacitus have had a more normal and un-
interrupted development in England than any-
where else. Nowhere, indeed, in the whole history
of the human race, can we point to such a well-
rounded and unbroken continuity of political life
as we find in the thousand years of English his-
tory that have elapsed since the victory of William
the ISTorman at Senlac. In England the free gov-
ernment of the primitive Aryans has been to this
day uninterruptedly maintained, though every-
where lost or seriously impaired on the continent
of Europe, except in remote Scandinavia and im-
pregnable Switzerland. But obviously, if in the
conflict of ages between civilization and barbarism
England had occupied such an inferior strategic
position as that occupied by Hungary or Poland
or Spain, if her territory had been liable once or
twice in a century to be overrun by fanatical Sar-
acens or beastly Mongols, no such remarkable and
quite exceptional result could have been achieved.
'^Manifest Destiny.''^ Ill
Ilaving duly fathomed the significance of this stra-
tegic position of the English race while confined
within the limits of the British islands, we are
now prepared to consider the significance of the
stupendous expansion of the English race which
first became possible through the discovery and
settlement of North America. I said, at the close
of my first lecture, that the victory of Wolfe at
Quebec marks the greatest turning-point as yet
discernible in all modern history. At the first
blush such an unqualified statement may have
sounded as if an American student of history
were inclined to attach an undue value to events
that have happened upon his own soil. After the
survey of universal history which we have now
taken, however, I am fully prepared to show that
the conquest of the North American continent by
men of English race was unquestionably the most
])rodigious event in the political annals of man-
kind. Let us consider, for a moment, the cardinal
facts which this English conquest and settlement
of North America involved.
Chronologically the discovery of America coin-
cides precisely with the close of the Middle Ages,
and with the opening of the drama of what is
called inodeni history. The coincidence is in
many ways significant. The close of the Middle
118 American Political Ideas.
Ages — as we have seen — was characterized bj the
increasing power of the crown in all the great
countries of Europe, and by strong symptoms of
popular restlessness in view of this increasing pow-
er. It was characterized also by the great Prot-
estant outbreak against the despotic pretensions
of the Church, which once, in its antagonism to
the rival temporal power, had befriended the lib-
erties of the people, but now (especially since the
death of Boniface YIII.) sought to enthrall them
with a tyranny far worse than that of irresponsible
king or emperor. As we have seen Aryan civili-
zation in Europe struggling for many centuries to
prove itself superior to the assaults of outer bar-
barism, so here we find a decisive struggle begin-
ning between the antagonist tendencies which had
grown up in the midst of this civilization. Hav-
ing at length won the privilege of living without
risk of slaughter and pillage at the hands of Sara-
cens or Mongols, the question now arose whether
the people of Europe should go on and apply their
intelligence freely to the problem of making life as
rich and fruitful as possible in varied material and
spiritual achievement, or should fall forever into
the barren and monotonous way of living and think-
ing which has always distinguished the half-civil-
ized populations of Asia. This — and nothing less
"Manifest Destiny:' 119
than this, I think — was the practical political ques-
tion really at stake in the sixteenth century between
Protestantism and Catholicism. Holland and Eng-
land entered the lists in behalf of the one solution
of this question, while Spain and the Pope defended
the other, and the issue was fonght out on European
soil, as we have seen, with varying success. But
the discovery of America now came to open up
an enormous region in which whatever seed of
civilization should be planted was sure to grow to
such enormous dimensions as by and by to exert
a controlling influence upon all such controver-
sies. It was for Spain, France, and England to
contend for the possession of this vast region, and
to prove by the result of the struggle which kind
of civilization was endowed with the hi^rher and
sturdier political life. The race which here should
gain the victory was clearly destined hereafter to
take the lead in the world, though the rival pow-
ers could not in those days fully appreciate this
fact. They who founded colonies in America as
trading-stations or military outposts probably did
not foresee that these colonies must by and by
become imperial states far greater in physical
DKiss than the states which planted them. It is
not likely that they were philosophers enough to
foresee that this prodigious physical development
120 American Political Ideas.
would mean that the political ideas of the parent
state should acquire a hundred-fold power and sem-
inal influence in the future work of the world. It
was not until the American Ee volution that this
began to be dimly realized by a few prescient
thinkers. It is by no means so fully realized even
now that a clear and thorough -going statement
of it has not somewhat an air of novelty. When
the highly-civilized community, representing the
ripest political ideas of England, was planted in
America, removed from the manifold and com-
plicated checks we have just been studying in the
history of the Old World, the growth was porten-
tously rapid and steady. There were no Attilas
now to stand in the way, — only a Philip or a Pon-
tiac. The assaults of barbarism constituted only
a petty annoyance as compared with the conflict
of ages which had gone on in Europe. There was
no occasion for society to assume a military as-
pect. Principles of self-government were at once
put into operation, and no one thought of calling
them in question. When the neighbouring civili-
zation of inferior type — I allude to the French in
Canada — began to become seriousl}^ troublesome,
it was struck down at a blow. When the mother-
country, under the guidance of an ignorant king
and short-sighted ministers, undertook to act upon
^^ Manifest Destiny P 121
the antiquated theory that the new nommnnities
were merely groups of trading-stations, the politi-
cal bond of connection was severed; yet the war
which ensued was not like the war which had but
just now been so gloriously ended by the victory
of Wolfe. It was not a struggle between two dif-
ferent peoples, like the French of the Old Eeginie
and the English, each representing antagonistic
theories of how political life ought to be conduct-
ed. But, like the Barons' War of the thirteenth
century and the Parliament's War of the seven-
teenth, it was a struggle sustained by a part of the
English people in behalf of principles that time
lias shown to be equally dear to all. And so the is-
sue only made it apparent to an astonished world
that instead of one there were now two Enrjlands^
alike prepared to work with might and main to-
ward the political regeneration of mankind.
Let us consider now to what conclusions the
rapidity and unabated steadiness of the increase of
the English race in America must lead us as we
go on to forecast the future. Carlyle somewhero
6})eak8 slightingly of the fact that the Americans
double their numbers every twenty years, as if
to have forty million dollar-hunters in the world
were any better than to have twenty million dol-
lar-hunters! The implication that Americans are
122 American Political Ideas.
nothing but dollar-lmnters, and are thereby dis-
tinguishable from the rest of mankind, would not
perhaps bear too elaborate scrutiny. But during
the present lecture we have been considering the
gradual transfer of the preponderance of physical
strength from the hands of the war-loving portion
of the human race into the hands of the peace-
loving portion, — into the hands of the dollar-hunt-
ers, if you please, but out of the hands of the
scalp-hunters. Obviously to double the numbers
of a pre-eminently industrious, peaceful, orderly,
and free-thinking community, is somewhat to in-
crease the weight in the world of the tendencies
that go towards making communities free and or-
derly and peaceful and industrious. So that, from
this point of view, the fact we are speaking of is
well worth considering, even for its physical di-
mensions. I do not know whether the United
States could support a population everywhere as
dense as that of Belgium ; so I will suppose that,
with ordinary improvement in cultivation and in
the industrial arts, we might support a population
half as dense as that of Belgium, — and this is no
doubt an extremely moderate supposition. I^ow
a very simple operation in arithmetic will show
that this means a population of fifteen hundred
millions, or more than the population of the whole
^^ Manifest Destiny ^ 123
world at the present date. Another very simple
operation in arithmetic will show that if we were
to go on doubling our numbers, even once in ev-
ery twenty -five years, we should reach that stu-
pendous figure at about the close of the twentieth
century, — that is, in the days of our great-great-
grandchildren. I do not predict any such result,
for there are discernible economic reasons for be-
lieving that there will be a diminution in the rate
of increase. The rate must nevertheless continue
to be very great, in the absence of such causes as
formerly retarded the growth of population in
Europe. Our modern wars are hideous enough,
no doubt, but they are short. They are settled
with a few heavy blows, and the loss of life and
property occasioned by tiiem is but trifling when
compared with the awful ruin and desolation
wrought by the perpetual and protracted contests
of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. Chronic
warfare, both private and public, periodic famines,
and sweeping pestilences like the Ehick Death, —
these were the things which formerly shortened
human life and kept down population. In the ab-
sence of such causes, and with the abundant capac-
ity of our country for feeding its people, I think
it an extremely moderate statement if we say tliat
by the end of the next century the English race in
124 American Political Ideas.
the United States will number at least six or seven
hundred millions.
It used to be said that so huge a people as this
could not be kept together as a single national ag-
gregate, — or, if kept together at all, could only be
so by means of a powerful centralized government,
like that of ancient Rome under the emperors. I
think we are now prepared to see that this is a
great mistake. If the Roman Empire could have
possessed that political vitality in all its parts
which is secured to the United States by the prin-
ciples of equal representation and of limited state
sovereignty, it might well have defied all the shocks
which tribally-organized barbarism could ever have
directed against it. As it was, its strong central-
ized government did not save it from political dis-
integration. One of its weakest political features
was precisely this, — that its "strong centralized
government " was a kind of close corporation, gov-
erning a score of provinces in its own interest
rather than in the interest of the provincials. In
contrast with such a system as that of the Roman
Empire, the skilfully elaborated American system
of federalism appears as one of the most impor-
tant contributions that the English race has made
to the general work of civilization. The working
out of this feature in our national constitution, by
''Manifest Destiny:' 125
Hamilton aud Madison and their associates, was
the finest specimen of constructive statesmanship
that the world has ever seen. Not that these states-
men originated the principle, but they gave form
and expression to the principle which was latent
in the circumstances under which the group of
American colonies had grown up, and which sug-
gested itself so forcibly that the clear vision of
these thinkers did not fail to seize upon it as the
fundamental principle upon which alone could the
affairs of a great people, spreading over a vast con-
tinent, be kept in a condition ap])roaching to some-
thing like permanent peace. Stated broadly, so
as to acquire somewhat the force of a universal
proposition, the principle of federalism is just
tliis: — that the people of a state sliall have full
and entire control of their own domestic affairs,
which directly concern them only, and which they
will naturally manage with more intelligence and
with more zeal than any distant governing body
could possibly exercise ; but that, as regards mat-
ters of common concern between a group of states,
a decision shall in every case be reached, not by
brutal warfare or by weary dii)lomacy, but by the
systematic legislati(jn of a central government
wliich represents both states and people, and
wliobe decisions can always be enforced, if neces-
126 American Political Ideas.
sary, by the combined physical power of all the
states. This principle, in various practical appli-
cations, is so familiar to Americans to-day that we
seldom pause to admire it, any more than we stop
to admire the air which we breathe or the sun
which gives us light and life. Yet I believe that
if no other political result than this could to-day
be pointed out as coming from the colonization of
America by Englishmen, we should still be justi-
fied in regarding that event as one of the most im-
portant in the history of mankind. For obviously
the principle of federalism, as thus broadly stated,
contains within itself the seeds of permanent peace
between nations; and to this glorious end I be-
lieve it will come in the fulness of time.
And now we may begin to see distinctly what
it was that the American government fought for
in the late civil war, — a point which at the time
was by no means clearly apprehended outside the
United States. We used to hear it often said,
while that war was going on, that we were fight-
ing not so much for the emancipation of the ne-
gro as for the maintenance of our federal union ;
and I well remember that to many who were
burning to see our country purged of the folly
and iniquity of negro slavery this used to seem
like taking a low and unrighteous view of the
^'Manifest Destiny:' 127
case. From the stand-point of universal history
it was nevertheless the correct and proper view.
The emancipation of the negro, as an incidental
result of the struggle, was a priceless gain wliich
was greeted warmly by all right-minded people.
But deeper down than this question, far more
subtly interwoven with the innermost fibres of
our national well-being, far heavier laden too
with weighty consequences for the future weal
of all mankind, was the question whether this
great pacific principle of union joined with inde-
pendence should be overthrown by the first deep-
seated social difficulty it had to encounter, or
should stand as an example of priceless value to
other ages and to other lands. The solution was
well worth the effort it cost. There have been
many useless wars, but this was not one of them,
for more than most wars that have been, it was
fought in the direct interest of peace, and the vic-
tory 80 dearly purchased and so humanely used
was an earnest of future peace and happiness for
the world.
/ The object, therefore, for which the American
government fought, was the perpetual maintenance
of that peculiar state of things which the federal
union had created, — a state of things in which,
througliout the whole vast territory over which
128 American Political Ideas.
the Union holds sway, questions between states,
like questions between individuals, must be settled
by legal argument and judicial decisions and not
by wager of battle. Far better to demonstrate
this point once for all, at whatever cost, than to
be burdened hereafter, like the states of Europe,
with frontier fortresses and standing armies and
all the barbaric apparatus of mutual suspicion !
For so great an end did this most pacific people
engage in an obstinate war, and never did any
war so thoroughly illustrate how military power
may be wielded, when necessary, by a people that
Las passed entirely from the military into the in-
dustrial stage of civilization, i The events falsified
all the predictions that were drawn from the con-
templation of societies less advanced politically.
It was thought that so peaceful a people could
not raise a great army on demand ; yet within a
twelvemonth the government had raised five hun-
dred thousand men by voluntary enlistment. It
was thought that a territory involving military
operations at points as far apart as Paris and Mos-
cow could never be thoroughly conquered ; yet
in April 1865 the federal armies might have
marched from end to end of the Gulf States with-
out meeting any force to oppose them. It was
thought that the maintenance of a great army
''Manifest DestinyP 129
would beget a military temper in the Americans
and lead to manifestations of Bonapartism, — do-
mestic usurpation and foreign aggression ; yet the
moment the work was done the great army van-
ished, and a force of twenty-five thousand men
was found sufficient for the military needs of the
whole countrv. It was thoucrht that eleven states
which had struggled so hard to escape from the
federal tie could not be re-admitted to voluntary
co-operation in the general government, but must
henceforth be held as conquered territory, — a most
dangerous experiment for any free people to try.
Yet within a dozen years we find the old federal
relations resumed in all their completeness, and
the disunion party powerless and discredited in
the very states where once it had wrought such
mischiefj Nay more, we even see a curiously
disputed presidential election, in which the votes
of the soutliern states were given almost with
unanimity to one of the candidates, decided quiet-
ly by a court of arbitration ; and we see a univer-
sal acquiescence in the decision, even in spite of
a general belief that an extraordinary combina-
tion of legal subtleties resulted in adjudging the
presidency to the candidate who was not really
elected.
Such has been the result of the first great at-
130 American Political Ideas,
tempt to break up the federal union in America.
It is not probable that another attempt can ever
be made with anything like an equal chance of
success. Here were eleven states, geographically
contiguous, governed by groups of men who for
half a century had pursued a well-defined policy in
common, united among themselves and marked off
from most of the other states by a difference far
more deeply rooted in the groundwork of society
than any mere economic difference, — the differ-
ence between slave-labour and free-labour. These
eleven states, moreover, held such an economic re-
lationship with England that they counted upon
compelling the naval power of England to be used
in their behalf. And finally it had not yet been
demonstrated that the maintenance of the federal
union was something for which the great mass of
the people would cheerfully fight. Never could
the experiment of secession be tried, apparently,
under fairer auspices ; yet how tremendous the
defeat ! It was a defeat that wrought conviction,
— the conviction that no matter how grave the
political questions that may arise hereafter, they
must be settled in accordance with tke legal meth-
ods the Constitution has provided, and that no
state can be allowed to break the peace. It is the
thoroughness of this conviction that has so greatly
^^Manifest Destiny^ 131
facilitated the reinstatement of the revolted states
in their old federal relations ; and the good sense
and good faith with which the southern people,
in spite of the chagrin of defeat, have accepted
the situation and acted upon it, is something un-
precedented in history, and calls for the warmest
sympathy and admiration on the part of their
brethren of the north. The federal principle in
America has passed through this fearful ordeal
and come out stronger than ever; and we trust it
will not again be put to so severe a test. But
with this principle unimpaired, there is no reason
why any further increase of territory or of popu-
lation should overtask the resources of our gov-
ernment.
In the United States of America a century hence
we shall therefore doubtless have a political aggre-
gation immeasurably surpassing in power and in
dimensions an}^ empire that has as yet existed.
But we must now consider for a moment the prob-
able future career of the English race in other parts
of the world. The colonization of North America
by Englishmen had its direct effects upon the east-
ern as well as upon the western side of the Atlan-
tic. The immense growth of the commercial and
naval strength of England between the time of
Cromwell and the time of the elder Pitt was iuti-
132 Arfierican Political Ideas,
matelj connected with the colonization of IS^orth
America and the establishment of plantations in
the West Indies. These circumstances reacted
powerfully upon the material development of Eng-
land, multiplying manifold the dimensions of her
foreign trade, increasing proportionately her com-
mercial marine, and giving her in the eighteenth
century the dominion over the seas. Endowed
with this maritime supremacy, she has with an un-
erring instinct proceeded to seize upon the keys of
empire in all parts of the world, — Gibraltar, Mal-
ta, the isthmus of Suez, Aden, Ceylon, the coasts
of Australia, island after island in the Pacific, — •
every station, in short, that commands the path-
ways of maritime commerce, or guards the ap-
proaches to the barbarous countries which she is
beginning to regard as in some way her natural
heritage. Any well-filled album of postage-stamps
is an eloquent commentary on this maritime su-
premacy of England. It is enough to turn one's
head to look over her colonial blue-books. The
natural outcome of all this overflowing vitality it
is not difiicult to foresee. No one can carefully
watch what is going on in Africa to-day without
recognizing it as the same sort of thing which was
going on in !Sorth America in the seventeenth
century ; and it cannot fail to bring forth similar
^'Manifest DesiinyP 133
results in course of time. Here is a vast country,
rich in beautiful scenery and in resources of tim-
ber and minerals, with a salubrious climate and
fertile soil, with great navigable rivers and inland
lakes, which will not much longer be left in con-
trol of tawny lions and long-eared elephants and
negro fetich-worshippers. Already five flourishing
English states have been established in the south,
besides the settlements on the Gold Coast and
those at Aden commanding the Red Sea. English
explorers work their wa}^, with infinite hardship,
through its untravelled wilds, and track the courses
of the Cono:o and the Nile as their forefathers
tracked the Potomac and the Iludson. The work
of La Salle and Smith is finding its counterpart in
the labours of Baker and Livingstone. Who can
doubt that within two or three centuries the Afri-
can continent will be occupied by a mighty nation
of English descent, and covered with populous cit-
ies and flourishing farms, with railroads and tele-
graphs and other devices of civilization as yet un-
dreamed of ?
If we look next to Australia, we find a country
of more than two-thirds the area of the United
States, with a temperate climate and immense
resources, agricultural and mineral, — a country
sparsely peopled by a race of irredeeuuiblc savages
134 American PGlitical Ideas.
hardly above the level of brutes. Here England
within the present century has planted six great-
ly thriving states, concerning which I have not
time to say much, but one fact will serve as a speci-
men. When in America we wish to illustrate in
one word the wonderful growth of our so-called
north-western states, we refer to Chicago, — a city
of half-a-million inhabitants standing on a spot
which fifty years ago was an uninhabited marsh.
In Australia the city of Melbourne was founded in
1837, the year when the present queen of England
began to reign, and the state of which it is the
capital was hence called Yictoria. This city, now*
just forty-three years old, has a population half as
great as that of Chicago, has a public library of
200,000 volumes, and has a university with at least
one professor of world-wide renown. When we
see, by the way, within a period of five years and
at such remote points upon the earth's surface,
such erudite and ponderous works in the English
language issuing from the press as those of Pro-
fessor Hearn of Melbourne, of Bishop Colenso of
Natal, and of Mr. Hubert Bancroft of San Fran-
cisco, — even such a little commonplace fact as this
is fraught with wonderful significance when we
* In 1880.
'' Manifest Destiny ^ 135
think of all that it implies. Then there is New
Zealand, with its climate of perpetual spring, where
the English race is now multiplying faster than
anywhere else in the world unless it be in Texas
and Minnesota. And there are in the Pacific Ocean
many rich and fertile spots where we shall very
soon sec the same things going on.
It is not necessary to dwell upon such consider-
ations as these. It is enough to point to the gen-
eral conclusion, that the work which the English
race began when it colonized North America is
destined to go on until every land on the earth's
surface that is not already the seat of an old civil-
ization shall become English in its language, in its
political habits and traditions, and to a predomi-
nant extent in the blood of its people. The day is
at hand when four-fifths of the human race will
trace its pedigree to English forefathers, as four-
fifths of the white people in the United States
trace their pedigree to-day. The race thus spread
over both hemispheres, and from the rising to the
setting sun, will not fail to keep that sovereignty
of the sea and that commercial supremacy which
it began to acquire when England first stretched
its arm across tlie Atlantic to the shores of Vir-
ginia and ^lassachusetts. The language spoken by
these great communities will not be sundered into
136 American Political Ideas.
dialects like the langnage of the ancient Eomans,
but perjDetual intercommunication and the univer-
sal habit of reading and writing will preserve its
integrity ; and the world's business will be trans-
acted by English-speaking people to so great an
extent, that whatever language any man may have
learned in his infancy he will find it necessary
sooner or later to learn to express his thoughts in
English. And in this way it is by no means im-
probable that, as Grimm the German and Candolle
the Frenchman long since foretold, the language
of Shakespeare may ultimately become the lan-
guage of mankind.
In view of these considerations as to the stupen-
dous future of the English race, does it not seem
very probable that in due course of time Europe
— which has learned some valuable lessons from
America already — will find it worth while to adopt
the lesson of federalism ? Probably the European
states, in order to preserve their relative weight
in the general polity of the world, will find it nec-
essary to do so. In that most critical period of
American history between the winning of inde-
pendence and the framing of the Constitution,
one of the strongest of the motives which led the
confederated states to sacrifice part of their sov-
ereignty by entering into a federal union was their
''Manifest Destiny.''^ 137
keen sense of their weakness when taken severally.
In physical strength such a state as Massachusetts
at that time amounted to little more than Ham-
burg or Bremen ; but the thirteen states taken to-
gether made a nation of respectable power. Even
the wonderful progress we have made in a century
Las not essentially changed this relation of things.
Our greatest state, New York, taken singly, is
about the equivalent of Belgium ; our weakest
state, Nevada, would scarcely be a match for the
county of Dorset ; yet the United States, taken to-
gether, are probably at this moment the strongest
nation in the world.
Now a century hence, w^ith a population of six
hundred millions in the United States, and a hun-
dred and fifty millions in Australia and New Zea-
land, to say nothing of the increase of power in
other parts of the English-speaking world, the rel-
ative weights will be very different from what they
were in 17S8. The population of Europe will not
increase in anything like the same proportion, and
a very considerable part of the increase will bo
transferred by emigration to the English-speaking
world outside of Europe. By the end of the twen-
tieth century such nations as Franco and Germany
can only claim such a relative position in tlie po-
litical world as Holland and Switzerland nuw OC'
138 American Political Ideas.
cupy. Their greatness in thought and scholarship,
in industrial and aesthetic art, will doubtless con-
tinue unabated. But their political weights will
severally have come to be insignificant ; and as we
now look back, with historic curiosity, to the days
when Holland was navally and commercially the
rival of England, so people will then need to be
reminded that there was actually once a time when
little France was the most powerful nation on the
earth. It will then become as desirable for the
states of Europe to enter into a federal union as
it was for the states of North America a century
ago.
It is only by thus adopting the lesson of feder-
alism that Europe can do away with the chances
of useless warfare which remain so long as its dif-
ferent states own no allegiance to any common
authority. War, as we have seen, is with barbar-
ous races both a necessity and a favourite occupa-
tion. As long as civilization comes into contact
with barbarism, it remains a too frequent neces-
sity. But as between civilized and Christian na-
tions it is a wretched absurdity. One sympathizes
keenly with wars such as that which Russia has
lately concluded, for setting free a kindred race
endowed with capacity for progress, and for hum-
bling the worthless barbarian who during four cen-
'^ Manifest Destiny.^'' 139
turies has wrought such incalculable damage to the
European world. But a sanguinary struggle for
the Rhine frontier, between two civilized Chris-
tian nations who have each enough work to do in
the world without engaging in such a strife as this,
will, I am sure, be by and by condemned by the
general opinion of mankind. Such questions will
Lave to be settled by discussion in some sort of
federal council or parliament, if Europe would
keep pace with America in the advance towards
universal law and order. All will admit that such
a state of things is a great desideratum : let us see
if it is really quite so Utopian as it may seem at
the first glance. No doubt the lord who dwelt in
Uaddon Hall in the fifteenth century would have
thought it very absurd if you had told him that
"within four hundred years it would not be neces-
sary for country gentlemen to live in great stone
dungeons with little cross-barred windows and loop-
holes from which to shoot at people going by. Yet
to-day a country gentleman in some parts of Mas-
sachusetts may sleep securely without locking his
front-door. We have not yet done away with rob-
bery and murder, but we have at least made pri-
vate warfare illegal; we have arrayed public opin-
ion against it to such an extent that the })olice-
court usually makes short shrift fur the misguided
1-40 America/ii Political Ideas.
man who tries to wreak vengeance on his enemy.
Is it too much to hope that by and by we may sim-
ilarly put public warfare under the ban ? I think
not. Already in America, as we have seen, it has
become customary to deal with questions between
states just as we would deal with questions be-
tween individuals. This we have seen to be the
real purport of American federalism. To have
established such a system over one great continent
is to have made a very good beginning towards
establishing it over the world. To establish such
a system in Europe will no doubt be difficult, for
here we have to deal with an immense complica-
tion of prejudices, intensified by linguistic and eth-
nological differences. Nevertheless the pacific press-
ure exerted upon Europe by America is becoming
so great that it will doubtless before long over-
come all these obstacles. I refer to the industrial
competition between the old and the new worlds,
which has become so conspicuous within the last
ten years. Agriculturally Minnesota, Nebraska,
and Kansas are already formidable competitors
with England, France, and Germany ; but this is
but the beginning. It is but the first spray from
the tremendous wave of economic competition
that is gathering in the Mississippi valley. By
and by, when our shameful tariff — falsely called
^^ Manifest DestinyP 141
"protective" — shall have been done avraj with,
and our manufacturers shall produce superior arti-
cles at less cost of raw material, we shall begin to
compete with European countries in all the mar-
kets of the world; and the competition in manu-
factures will become as keen as it is now beo^in-
ning to be in agriculture. This time will not be
long in coming, for our tarifl-sjstem has already
begun to be discussed, and in the light of our
present knowledge discussion means its doom.
Born of crass ignorance and self-defeating greed,
it cannot bear the light. "When this curse to
American labour — scarcely less blighting than the
curse of negro slavery — shall have been once re-
moved, the economic pressure exerted upon Eu-
rope by the United States will soon become very
great indeed. It will not be long before this
economic pressure will make it simply impossible
for the states of Europe to keep up such military
armaments as they arc now maintaining. The
disparity between the United States, with a stand-
ing army of only twenty-five thousand men with-
drawn from industrial pursuits, and the states of
Eunjpe, with their standing armies amounting to
fuur uiillions of men, is something that cannot
possibly be kept up. The economic competition
will become so keen that luiropcan armies will
142 American Political Ideas.
have to be disbanded, tbe swords will have to be
turned into ploughshares, and thus the victory of
the industrial over the military type of civilization
will at last become complete. But to disband the
great armies of Europe will necessarily involve
tlie forcing of the great states of Europe into some
sort of federal relation, in which Congresses — al-
ready held on rare occasions — will become more
frequent, in which the principles of international
law will acquire a more definite sanction, and in
which the combined physical power of all the
states will constitute (as it now does in America)
a permanent threat against any state that dares to
wish for selfish reasons to break the peace. In
some such way as this, I believe, the industrial de-
velopment of the English race outside of Europe
will by and by enforce federalism upon Europe.
As regards the serious difficulties that grow out
of prejudices attendant upon differences in lan-
guage, race, and creed, a most valuable lesson is
furnished us by the history of Switzerland. I am
inclined to think that the greatest contribution
which Switzerland has made to the general prog-
ress of civilization has been to show us how such
obstacles can be surmounted, even on a small scale.
To surmount them on a great scale will soon be-
come the political problem of Europe ; and it is
^'Manifest Destiny?'' 143
America which has set the example and indicated
the method.
Thus we may foresee in general outline how,
through the gradual concentration of the prepon-
derance of physical power into the hands of the
most pacific communities, the wretched business
of warfare must finally become obsolete all over
the globe. The element of distance is now fast
becoming eliminated from political problems, and
the history of human progress politically will con-
tinue in the future to be what it has been in
the past, — the history of the successive union of
groups of men into larger and more complex ag-
gregates. As this process goes on, it may after
many more ages of political experience become
apparent that there is really no reason, in the na-
ture of things, why the whole of mankind should
not constitute politically one huge federation, —
each little group managing its local affairs in en-
tire independence, but relegating all questions of
international interest to the decision of one cen-
tral tribunal supported by the public opinion of
the entire human race. I believe that the time
will come when such a state of tilings will exist
upon the cartli, when it will be possible (with our
friends of the Paris dinner-party) to speak of tho
UNrrKi) States as stretching from pole to pole, —
144 American Political Ideas.
or, with Tennyson, to celebrate the " parliament
of man and the federation of the world." In-
deed, only when such a state of things has began
to be realized, can Civilization, as sharply demar-
cated from Barbarism, be said to have fairly be-
gun. Only then can the world be said to have
become truly Christian. Many ages of toil and
doubt and perplexity will no doubt pass by before
such a desideratum is reached. Meanwhile it is
pleasant to feel that the dispassionate contempla-
tion of great masses of historical facts goes far
towards confirming our faith in this ultimate tri-
umph of good over evil. Our survey began with
pictures of horrid slaughter and desolation : it ends
with the picture of a world covered with cheerful
homesteads, blessed with a sabbath of perpetual
peaceo
THE STORY OF A
NEW ENGLAND TOWN
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
MIDDLETOWN CONNECTICUT
OCTOBER 10, 1900
TUB STORY OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN.
* The history of Middletown, Connecticut, is not
that of one of the world's great centres of com-
merce or of government, of literature, or of art;
nevertheless it has its points of attraction, not only
for those who dwell within the precincts of the
town, but for all who feel interested in the develop-
ment of civilization in our western hemisphere.
The mere length of time during which the town
has existed may serve to stamp for us the folly of
the assertion that "America has no history," —
one of those platitudes that people go on repeating
until they become deadened to their absurdity.
Next year the English-speaking folk of our planet
are to take part at Winchester, the ancient capital
of the kingdom of Wessex, in a grand millennial
celebration of the mighty hero, statesman, and
author who stands j)ret'minent among the foun-
ders of English nationality and English literature ;
the history of Middletown carries us back over
one fourth of the interval tliat has elapsed since
the death oj Alfred the Great. It is a history aa
148 American Political Ideas.
long as that of Rome from the beginning of the
Punic Wars to the reign of Augustus, and twice
as long as that of Athens when she was doing the
things that have made her for all time the light of
the world. These are great names, perhaps, to
bring into the same paragraph with that of our
modest little town. But the period of develop-
ment with which we are concerned is as import-
ant as any that is known in history. In the time
of Charles I., when our story begins, there were
about 5,000,000 people in the world speaking the
language of Shakespeare ; at the time of our first
national census there were about 12,000,000, one
third of them in the United States ; to-day there
are more than 120,000,000, three fifths of them
in the United States ; and there are children now
going to school who will live to see this vast num-
ber trebled. The task of organizing society politi-
cally, so that such immense communities might
grow up peacefully, preserving their liberties and
affording ample opportunity for the varied exer-
cise of the human faculties, is a task which baf-
fled the splendid talents of ancient Greece, and
in which the success of the Romans was but par-
tial and short-lived. We believe that the men
who use the mingled speech of Alfred and of Wil-
liam the Norman have solved the great political
The Story of a New England Town. 149
problem better than others have solved it. If we
except the provinces of the Netherlands, the Swis3
cantons, and such tiny city states as Monaco and
San Marino, which retain their ancient institu-
tions, there is not a nation on earth, making any
pretense to freedom and civilization, which has not
a constitution in great measure copied, within the
present century, either from England or from the
United States. Thus, whether willingly or not,
does the civilized world confess the primacy of the
English race in matters political.
But as between our British cousins and our-
selves, it is quite generally conceded that the
credit for having successfully extended the princi-
ples of free government over vast stretches of ter-
ritory belongs in a special degree to the American
people. The experiment of federalism is not a
new one. The Greeks applied to it their supple
and inventive genius with many interesting re-
sults, but they failed because the only kind of
popular government they knew was the town
meeting ; and of course you cannot bring together
forty or fifty town meetings from different points
of the compass to some common centre, to carry on
the work of government by discussion. But our
forefathers under King Alfred, a thousand years
ago, were familiar with a device which it had
150 American Political Ideas.
never entered into tlie mind of Greek or Roman
to conceive : they sent from each township a
couple of esteemed men to be its representatives
in the county court. Here was an institution
that admitted of indefinite expansion. That old
English county court is now seen to have been the
parent of all modern popular legislatures.
Now the Puritan settlers of New England
naturally brought across the ocean the political
habits and devices to which they and their fathers
had been inured. They migrated for the most
part in congregations, led by their pastors and
deacons, bringing with them their notions of law
and government and their custom of managing
their local affairs in a primary assembly, which
was always in reality a town meeting, even though
it might be called a vestry or a court-leet. Such
men with such antecedents, coming two hundred
and sixty-five years ago into the Connecticut Val-
ley, were confronted with circumstances which
soon made some form of representative federal
government a necessity.
About eight miles north of Middletown, as the
crow flies, there stands an old house of entertain-
ment known as Shipman's Tavern, in bygone
days a favorite resort of merry sleighing parties,
and famous for its fragrant mugs of steaming flip.
The Story of a Nem England Town. 151
It is now a lonely place; but if you go behind
it into the orcliard, and toil up a hillside among
the gnarled fantastic apple trees, a grade so steep
that it almost invites one to all fours, you sud-
denly come upon a scene so rare that when beheld
for the twentieth time it excites surprise. I have
seen few sights more entrancing. The land falls
abruptly away in a perpendicular precipice, while
far below the beautiful river flows placidly
through long stretches of smiling meadows, such
as Virgil and Dante might have chosen for their
Elysian fields. Turning toward the north, you
see, gleaming like a star upon the horizon, the
gilded dome of the Capitol at Hartford, and you
are at once reminded that this is sacred ground.
It was in this happy valley that a state was for
the first time brought into existence through the
instrumentality of a written constitution ; and
here it was that germs of federalism were sown
which afterwards played a leading part in the de-
velopment of our nation. Into the details of this
subject we have not time to go at length, but a
few words will indicate the importance of the
events in which the founders of Connecticut and
of Middletown were concerned.
We are so accustomed to general statements
about our Puritan forefathers and their aims in
152 American Political Ideas.
crossing the ocean that we are liable to forget
what a great diversity of opinion there was among
them, not so much on questions of doctrine as on
questions of organization and of government. The
two extremes were to be seen in the New Haven
colony, where church and state were absolutely
identified, and in Rhode Island, where they were
completely separated. The first step in founding
a church in Massachusetts was not taken without
putting a couple of malcontents on board ship
and packing them off to England. The leaders
of the great exodus were inclined to carry things
with a high hand. Worthy William Blackstone,
whom they found cosily settled all by himself
in the place now known as Boston, was fain to
retreat before them; he had come three thousand
miles, he said, to get away from my lords the
Bishops, and now he had no mind to stay and
submit to the humors of my lords the Brethren !
Afterward, as the dissentients became more nu-
merous, they scattered about and founded little
commonwealths each for himself. Thus did New
Hampshire begin its life with John Wheelwright,
the Providence Plantation with Roger Williams,
Rhode Island with Anne Hutchinson and her
friends. Thus it was with those families in Dor-
chester and Watertown and the new settlement
The Story of a New England Town. 153
soon to be called Cambridge, who did not look
with entire approval upon the proceedings of the
magistrates in Boston. In 1631 the governor and
council laid a tax upon the colony to pay for
building a palisade, and the men of Watertown
refused to pay their share, because they were not
represented in the body that laid the tax. This
protest led to the revival of the ancient county
court as a house of representatives for Massachu-
setts. Winthrop and Cotton and Dudley readily
yielded the point, because they fully understood
its importance ; but they were unable to make
such concessions as would satisfy the malcontents.
Their notions were aristocratic ; they believed that
the few ought to make laws for the many. More-
over, they wished to make a commonwealth like
that of the children of Israel under the Judges,
and into it nothing must enter that was not sanc-
tified; so they restricted the privilege of voting
and of liolding public office to members of the
Congregational churches qualified to take part in
the communion service.
At this juncture there arrived from England
two notable men, the Rev. Thomas Hooker and
the Rev. Sunmel Stone, both graduates of Em-
manuel College, Cambridge, and with them came
many followers and friends. They were settled
154 American Political Ideas,
as pastor and teacher of tlie congregation at the
New Town (Cambridge), and at once became
known as leaders of the opposition to the policy
of the ruler of Massachusetts. With them were
associated the layman John Haynes and the min-
isters John Warham of Dorchester and George
Phillips of Watertown, ancestor of Wendell
Phillips.
For our present purpose, it is enough to say
that within three years from the arrival of Hooker
and Stone the three congregations of Dorchester,
Cambridge, and Watertown had migrated in a
body to the further, or western, bank of New
England's chief river, the Connecticut, or " long
tidal stream," as it was called in the Algonquin
language. Here the new Dorchester presently
took the name Windsor, while its neighbor to the
southward called itself Hartford, after Mr. Stone's
English birthplace, which is pronounced in the
same way though spelled with an e. As for the
new Watertown, it was rebaptized Wethersfield,
after the birthplace of one of its principal men,
John Talcott, whose name in the colonial records,
where orthography wanders at its own sweet will,
usually appears as " Tailcoat." The wholesale
character of this westward migration may be
judged from the fact that of the families living in
The St07y of a New England Toion. 155
Cambridge on New Year's Day, 1G35, not more
than eleven were there on the Christmas of 1636 ;
the rest were all in Hartford.
Along with this exodus there went another from
Roxburj, led by William Pynchon, whose book
on the Atonement was afterward publicly burned
in the market place at Boston. This migration
paused on tlie eastern bank of the river at Spring-
field, where our story may leave it, as it took no
part in the founding of a new commonwealth.
This sudden and decisive westward movement
was a very notable affair. If the growth of New
England bad been like that of Virginia or of Penn-
sylvania, the frontier would have crept gradually
westward from the shores of Massachusetts Bay,
always opposing a solid front to the savage perils
of the wilderness, and there would have been one
large state with its seat of government at Boston.
But the differences in political ideals and the de-
sire of escaping from the rule of my lords the
Brethren led to this premature dispersal in all
directions, of which the exodus to the Connecticut
Valley was the most considerable instance.
The new towns, Windsor, Ilartfor(l,and Wethcrs-
fuild, were indisputably outside of the jurisdiction
of Massachusetts in so far as grants from tbe
crown could go. For two years a supervision waa
156 American Political Ideas.
exercised over the Connecticut Valley by persona
acting under a commission from Boston. Then
in January, 1639, a memorable thing was done.
The men of the three river towns held a conven-
tion at Hartford, and drew up a written consti-
tution which created the state of Connecticut.
This was the first instance known to history in
which a commonwealth was created in such a way.
Much eloquence has been expended over the com-
pact drawn up and signed by the Pilgrims in the
cabin of the Mayflower, and that is certainly an
admirable document ; but it is not a constitution ;
it does not lay down the lines upon which a gov-
ernment is to be constructed. It is simply a
promise to be good and to obey the laws. On the
other hand, the "Fundamental Orders of Con-
necticut " summon into existence a state govern-
ment which is, with strict limitations, paramount
over the local governments of the three towns, its
creators. This is not the place for inquiring into
the origin of written constitutions. Their pre-
cursors in a certain sense were the charters of
mediaeval towns, and such documents as the Great
Charter of 1215, by which the English sovereign
was bound to respect sundry rights and liberties
of his people. Our colonial charters were in a
sense constitutions, and laws that infringed them
The Story of a New England Town. 157
could be set aside by the courts. By rare good
fortune, aided by the consummate tact of the
younger Winthrop, Connecticut obtained in 1662
such a charter, which confirmed her in the pos-
session of her liberties. But these charters were
always, in form at least, a grant of privileges from
an overlord to a vassal, something given or bar-
tered by a superior to an inferior. With the con-
stitution which created Connecticut it was quite
otherwise. You may read its eleven articles from
beginning to end, and not learn from it that there
ever was such a country as England or such a
personage as the British sovereign. It is purely
a contract, in accordance with which we the peo-
ple of these three river towns propose to conduct
our public affairs. Here is the form of govern-
ment which commends itself to our judgment, and
we hereby agree to obey it while we reserve the
right to amend it. Unlike the Declaration of In-
dependence, this document contains no theoretical
phrases about liberty and equality, and it is all
the more impressive for their absence. It does
not deem it necessary to insist upon political free-
dom and upon equality before the law, but it takes
them for granted and proceeds at once to busi-
ness. Sur(3ly tliis was the true birth of American
democracy, and the ConnccLicul N'alley was ita
birthplace !
158 American Political Ideas.
If we were further to pursue tliis rich and fruit-
ful theme, we might point to the decisive part
played by the state of Connecticut, a hundred
and fifty years later, in the great discussion out of
which our Federal Constitution emerged into life.
Connecticut had her Governor and council elected
by a majority vote in a suffrage that was nearly
universal, while, on the other hand, in her lower
house the towns enjoyed an equality of represent-
ation. During all that period of five generations,
her public men, indeed all her people, were familiar
with the combination of the two principles of
equal representation and the representation of
popular majorities. It therefore happened that
at the critical moment of the immortal conven-
tion at Philadelphia, in 1787, when the big states
led by Virginia were at swords' points with the
little states led by New Jersey, and it seemed im-
possible to agree upon any form of federal govern-
ment — at that fateful moment when nothing kept
the convention from breaking up in despair but
the fear that anarchy would surely follow, — at
that moment Connecticut came forward with her
compromise, which presently healed the strife and
gave us our Federal Constitution. Equal repre-
sentation in one house of Congress, combined with
popular representation in the other, — such was
The Story of a New England Town, 159
the compromise which reconciled the jarring in-
terests, and won over all the smaller states to the
belief that they could enter into a more perfect
union without jeopardizing their welfare. The
part then played by Connecticut was that of
savior of the American nation, and she was en-
abled to play it through the circumstances which
attended her first beginnings as a commonwealth.
In the present survey our attention has been
for quite a while confined to the north of Rocky
Hill. It is now time for us to turn southward and
glance for a moment even as far as the shores of
Long Island Sound, in order that we may get a
picture of the surroundings among which Middle-
town came into existence.
In their bold western exodus to the Connecticut
River the English settlers courted danger, and one
of its immediate consequences was an Indian war.
The blow which our forefathers struck was surely
Cromwellian in its effectiveness. To use the fron-
tiersman's cynical phrase, it made *' many good
Indians." By annihilating the strongest tribe in
New England it secured peace for forty years, and
it laid open the coast for white settlers all the way
from Point Judith to the East River. Previously,
the English had no settlement there except the
blockhouse at Saybrook erected as a warning and
160 American Political Ideas,
a defense against the Dutch. But now the next
migration from England, led by men for whom
even the ideas of Winthrop and Cotton were not
sufficiently aristocratic and theocratic, listened to
the enthusiastic descriptions of the men who had
hunted Pequots, and thus were led to pursue their
way by sea to that alluring coast. In the found-
ing of New Haven, Milford, Branford, Guilford,
Stamford, and Southold over across the Sound, we
need only note that at first these were little self-
governing republics, like the cities of ancient
Greece, and that their union into the republic of
New Haven was perhaps even more conspicuously
an act of federation than the act by which the
three river towns had lately created the republic
of Connecticut.
A spirit of federalism was then, indeed, in the
air; and we can see how the germs of it were
everywhere latent in the incompatible views and
purposes of different groups of Puritans. Rather
than live alongside of their neighbors and cultivate
the arts of persuasion, they moved away and set
up for themselves. It was not until a generation
later that the Quakers thrust themselves in where
they were not wanted, and through a course of
martyrdom won for the New World its first glori-
ous victory in behalf of free speech. The earlier
The Story of a New England Town. 161
method was to keep at arm's length. There was
room enough in the wilderness, and no love was
lost between the neighboring communities. The
New Haven people restricted the suffrage to
church members, and vituperated their Connecti-
cut neighbors for not doing likewise. It was cus-
tomary for them to speak of the *' profane " and
" Christless " government of Connecticut. So in
our own time we sometimes meet with people who
— forgetful of the injunction " Render unto Ca3sar
the things that are Ccesar's " — fancy that a Chris-
tian nation ought to introduce the name of God
into its written constitution.
But while the wilderness was spacious enough
to accommodate these diverse commonwealths, its
dark and unknown recesses abounded in dangers.
With the Dutchmen at the west, the Frenchmen
at the north, and the Indians everywhere, circum-
spection was necessary, prompt and harmonious
action was imperatively called for. Thus the
scattering entailed the necessity of federation, and
the result was the noble New England Confed-
eracy, into which the four colonies of Connecticut,
New Haven, Massachusetts, and Plymouth entered
in 1043. This act of sovereignty was undertaken
without any consultation with the British Govern-
ment or any reference to it. The Confederacy
162 American Political Ideas.
received a serious blow in 1662, when Charles II.
annexed New Haven, without its consent, to Con-
necticut ; but it had a most useful career still
before it, for without the aid of a single British
regiment or a single gold piece from the Stuart
treasury it carried New England through the
frightful ordeal of King Philip's War, and came
to an honored end when it was forcibly displaced
by the arbitrary rule of Andros. It would be
difficult to overstate the importance of this New
England federation as a preparatory training for
the greater work of federation a century later.
Thus we are beginning to get some correct ap-
preciation of the political and social atmosphere
in which Middletown came into existence. It
was in the central home and nursing place of the
ideas and institutions which to-day constitute the
chief greatness of America and make the very
name United States so deeply significant, so redolent
of hopeful prophecy, like the fresh breath of the
summer morning. Let us not forget that what is
most vital, most organic, most prolific, in our na-
tional life, the easy and natural combination of
imperial vastness with unhampered local self-gov-
ernment, had its beginnings more intimately as-
sociated with the banks of our beautiful river than
with any other locality.
The Story of a New England Town. 163
The Puritan exodus from England was some-
thing unprecedented for volume, and in those days
when families of a dozen children were common, a
swarming from the parent hive was frequent. It
might seem as if a movement down-stream from
Wethersfield would naturally* have come first in
order. But the banks of the river would seem to
have been shrouded in woodland vegetation as
dense as that of the Congo or some stretches of
the lower Mississippi in our days. The settlers
were apt to be attracted by smooth open spaces,
such as the Indians called Pequoig ; such a place
was Wethersfield itself. But the little Connecticut
republic first made a long reach and laid its hand
upon some desirable places on the Sound. In the
eventful year 1639, Roger Ludlow, of Windsor, led
a swarm to Fairfield, the settlement of which was
soon followed by that of Stratford at the mouth
of the Ilousatonic River. This forward move-
ment separated Stamford from its sister towns of
the New Haven republic. Then in 1641 Connec-
ticut bought Saybrook from the representatives
of the grantees. Lord Saye and his friends, and in
the next year a colony planted at the moutli of
Pequot River was afterward called New I^oudon,
and the name of the river was changed to Thames.
Apparently (Connecticut had an eye to the main
164 American Political Ideas,
chance, or, in modern parlance, to the keys of
empire ; at all events, she had no notion of being
debarred from access to salt water, and while she
seized the mouths of the three great rivers, she
claimed the inheritance of the Pequots, including
all the lands where that domineering tribe had
ever exacted tribute.
In 1645, the same year that New London was
founded, came the settlement of Farmington, and
in 1646 the attention of the General Court was
directed to the country above the Wondunk^ or
great bend where the river forces its way east-
ward through a narrow rift in the Chatham hills.
The name of the region west of the river was
Mattabesett, or Mattabeseck (for coming from
Algonquin mouths the dentals were not really dis-
tinguishable from gutturals). It is the same name
as Mattapoisett, on the coast of Buzzard's Bay,
and it means a carrying place or portage, where
the red men would walk from one stream head to
the next, carrying their canoes upon their shoulders.
It may also mean the end of the carrying place,
the spot where the canoe is relaunched, and in its
application to Middletown there is some uncer-
tainty, arising perhaps from embarrassment of
riches. We have surely streams and portages in
plenty. What with the Sebethe and its south-
The Story of a New England Town. 165
western tributary that flows past Ebenezer Jack-
son's romantic lane, what with the Pameacha and
the Sanseer uniting in Sumner's Creek, Middletown
is fairly encompassed with running waters, which
doubtless made a braver show in the seventeenth
century than in these days of comparative tree-
lessness and drought. Just when the first settle-
ment was made in Mattabesett we are not too
precisely informed, but it was probably during the
year 1650, to which an ancient and unvarying
tradition has always assigned it. In September,
1651, we find an order of the General Court that
Mattabesett shall be a town, and that its people
shall choose for themselves a constable. In 1652
we find the town represented in the General Court,
and in 1653 the aboriginal name of Mattabesett
gives place to Middletown. The Rev. David
Dudley Field, in his commemorative address of
fifty years ago, suggested that this name was
"probably taken from some town in England for
which the settlers had a particular regard." I
have not found any Middletown in England,
though the name Middleton occurs in Lancashire,
and twice in Ireland, and perhaps elsewhere ; but
the lengthening change from a familiar Middleton
to Middletown is not in accordance witli tlie gen-
eral rule in such cases, so that we must probably
166 Amemcan Political Ideas,
fall back upon the more prosaic explanation that
the name was roughly descriptive of the place as
about halfway between the upper settlements and
the Saybrook fort. If so, it was one of the earliest
instances in America of the adoption of a new and
descriptive name instead of one taken from the
Bible or commemorative of some loved spot in the
mother country. Let us be thankful that it pre-
serves the old dignified simplicity ; a later and
more grandiloquent fashion would have outraged
our feelings with Centreville !
Mattabesett had its denizens before the peaked
hats of the Puritans were seen approaching the
mouth of the Sebethe. They were Algonquins of
the kind that were to be found everywhere east of
Henry Hudson's river, and in many other parts
of the continent, even to the Rocky Mountains.
The apostle Eliot preached to Mohegans at Hart-
ford in the same language which he addressed to
the Massachusetts tribe at Natick, and his trans-
lation of the Bible is perfectly intelligible to-day
to the Ojibways on Lake Superior. Between the
Algonquins of New England and such neighbors
as the Mohawks there was of course an ancient and
deep-seated difference of blood, speech, and tradi-
tion ; but one Algonquin was so much like an-
other that we need not speculate too curiously
Hie Story of a New England Town. 167
about the best name to be given to the tawny-
warriors ^vLo were gatbered in the grimy wig-
wama that clustered upon Indian Hill. Very
commonly the name of a clan was applied to its
principal war chief. Just as Rob Roy's proudest
title was The Macgregor, so the head of the Se-
queens in the Connecticut Valley was The Se-
queen. Our ancient friend Sowheag, upon Indian
Hill, was of that ilk, and it would not be incorrect
to call him a Mohegan.
It is worth mentioning that the territory of
Mattabesett was bought of Sowheag's Indians and
duly paid for. Sometimes historians tell us that
it was only Dutchmen, and not Englishmen, who
bought the red man's land instead of stealing it.
Such statements have been made in New York,
but if we pass on to Philadelphia we hear that it
was only Quakers who were thus scrupulous, and
when we arrive in Baltimore we learn that it was
only Roman Catholics. In point of fact, it was
the invariable custom of European settlers on this
Atlantic coast to purchase the lands on which
they settled, and the transaction was usually re-
corded in a deed to which the sagamores allixed
their marks. Nor was the allaii- really such a
mockery as it may at first thought seem to us.
The red man got what he sorely coveted, steel
168 American Political Ideas.
hatchets and grindstones, glass beads and rum,
perhaps muskets and ammunition, while he was
apt to reserve sundry rights of catching game and
jfish. A struggle was inevitable when the white
man's agriculture encroached upon and exhausted
the Indian's hunting ground ; but other circum-
stances usually brought it on long before that
point was reached. The age of iron superseded
the stone age in America by the same law of pro-
gress that from time immemorial has been bear-
ing humanity onward from brutal savagery to
higher and more perfect life. In the course of it
our forefathers certainly ousted and dispossessed
the red men, but they did not do it in the spirit
of robbery.
The original extent of territory purchased from
Sowheag cannot be accurately stated, but ten
years later we find it stretching five miles or
more southward from the Sebethe River, and
northward as far as Rocky Hill ; while from the
west bank of the Connecticut it extended inland
from five to ten miles, and from the east bank
more than six miles, comprising the present areas
of Portland and Chatham.
The original centre of settlement was the space
in front of the present Catholic church, between
Spring Street and the old graveyard. There in
The Story of a New England Town. 169
1652 was built the first meeting-house, — a rude
wooden structure, twenty feet square and only
ten feet in height, — which until 1G80 served the
purposes alike of public worship and of civil ad-
ministration, as in most New England towns of
the seventeenth century. A second meeting-
house was then built on the east side of Main
Street, about opposite the site of Liberty Street.
About that neighborhood were congregated most
of the Lower Houses, as they were called ; for a
couple of miles north of the Sebethe, and sepa-
rated from this settlement by stretches of marshy
meadow, was the village which within the mem-
ory of men now living was still called the Upper
Houses. In those heroic ages of theology, when
John Cotton used at bedtime to " sweeten his
mouth with a morsel of Calvin," when on freezing
Sundays the breaths of the congregation were
visible while at the end of the second hour the
minister reached his climax with seventeenthly,
— in those days it was apparently deemed no
hardship for the good people of the Upper Houses
to trudge tlirough the mire of early springtime or
und(?r the fierce sun of August to attend the ser-
vices at the central village. Indulgence in street
cars had not come in to weaken their fibre. Rut
by 1703 there were people enough in the Upper
170 American Political Ideas.
Houses to have a meeting-house of their own, and
we find them marked oft" into a separate parish, —
the first stage in the process of fission which
ended in 1851 in the incorporation of the town of
Cromwell.
I do not intend, however, to become prolix in
details of the changes that have occurred in the
map of Middletown during more than two centu-
ries. Many such facts are recounted in the ad-
dress, lately mentioned, of Dr. Field, my predeces-
sor in this pleasant function fifty years ago. It
is a scholarly and faithful sketch of the history of
our town, and full of interest to readers who care
for that history. Instead of an accumulation of
facts, I prefer in this brief hour to generalize
upon a few salient points. As regards the terri-
torial development of the town, it may be noted
that while it long ago became restricted to the
western bank of the river, its most conspicuous
movement has lately been in a southerly direction.
After the cutting down at the north there came a
considerable development just below the great
bend, in which the most prominent feature is the
Asylum upon its lofty hill. Nothing else, per-
haps, has so far altered the look of things to the
traveler approaching by the river. But little
more than a century ago, say at the time of the
The Story of a New England Town. 171
Declaration of Independence, the centre of the
town was still north of Washington Street. There
stood the town house in the middle of Main
Street, while down at the southern end, just east
of the space since known as Union Park, stood
the Episcopal church, built in 1750. With the
growth of the state there had been a creation of
counties in 1668, and until 1786 Middletown wa3
still a part of Hartford County. A reminiscence
of bygone days was kept up in the alternate sit-
tings of the legislature at Hartford and New Haven,
but Middletown had grown to be larger than either
of those places ; with a population of between
five and six thousand it was the largest town in
Connecticut, and ranked among the most im-
portant in the United States at a time when only
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston could count
more than fifteen thousand. John Adams, in
1771, was deeply impressed with the town from
the moment when he first caught sight of it from
Prospect Hill on the Hartford road; but his ad-
miration reached a climax when he went to the
Old North meeting-house and listened to the choir.
About the same time, a well-known churchman
and Tory, tlr.it sad dog, Dr. Samuel Peters, the
inventor of the fabled New Haven Hhio Laws,
said of Middletown: ''Here is an elegant church,
172 American Political Ideas.
with steeple, bell, clock, and organ ; and a large
meeting without a steeple. The people are polite,
and not much troubled with that fanatic zeal
which pervades the rest of the colony."
This is testimony to an urbanity of manner that
goes with some knowledge of the world. The peo-
ple of the thirteen American commonwealths were
then all more or less rustic or provincial, but there
was a kind of experience which had a notable effect
in widening men's minds, softening prejudices, and
cultivating urbanity, and that was the kind of ex-
perience that was gained by foreign trade. Dur-
ing the eighteenth century Middletown profited
largely by such experience. In 1776, among fifty
names of residents on Main Street, seventeen were
in one way or another connected with the sea, either
as merchants, shipowners, skippers, or ropemakers.
The town was then a port of some consequence ;
more shipping was owned here than anywhere else
in the state, and vessels were built of marked ex-
cellence. After 1700 the cheerful music of adze
and hammer was always to be heard in the ship-
yards. These circumstances brought wealth and
the refinement that comes with the broadening of
experience. The proximity of Yale College, too,
was an important source of culture. Richard Al-
sop, born in 1761, grandson of a merchant and ship-
The, Story of a New England Town. 173
owner who sat in the Continental Congress, was a
wit, linguist, pamphleteer, and poet, who cannot
be omitted from any thorough study of American
literature. There was a volume of business large
enough to employ able lawyers, and thoroughness
of training sufficient to make great ones. Such was
Titus Hosmer, brilliant father of a brilliant son,
whom men used to speak of as the peer of Oliver
Ellsworth of Windsor and William Samuel John-
son of Stratford. In the society graced by the
presence of such men there was also material com-
fort and elegance. The change in this respect
from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century
was strongly marked. On opposite sides of the old
village green, until some thirty years ago, one might
have seen the contrast well exemplified. While
near the corner of Main and vSpring streets a group
of small houses preserved the picturesque reminis-
cence of one of the styles which our forefathers
brouglit from their English lanes and bj^ways, just
opposite was the spacious estate of Captain Hack-
staff with its majestic avenue of buttonball trees.
The complete destruction and disappearanceof that
noble landmark, to give place to a railway junction,
is a typical instance of tlie kind of transformation
wrou[;ht upon the face of things by the Titanic and
forceful age in which wo are living. The river
174 American Political Ideas.
bank, once so proud in its beauty, like tlie elder
sister in the fairy tale, has become a grimy Cin-
derella pressed into the service of the gnomes and
elves of modern industry. The shriek of the iron
horse is daily echoed by the White Rocks, and the
view that from my study window used to range
across green pastures to the quiet blue water is now
obstructed by a tall embankment and a coal
wharf.
The mention of the railroad reminds us of the
fact that in the middle of the nineteenth century
our town had ceased to rank as foremost in the
state for population. The two capital cities, per-
haps one or two others, had already passed it in
numbers and in commercial activity, and when its
growth was compared with that of American cities
in general it had begun to seem rather small and
insignificant. The Kev. Dr. Field, in this connec-
tion, pointed to the wholesale westward emigration
of New Englanders. " Why are there not more of
us here ? " he asks. Is it not because so many have
found new homes in the central parts of New York
and about the shores of the Great Lakes ? Truly,
Connecticut has been a sturdy colonizer. In the
Revolutionary period the valley of the Susquehanna
was her goal, a little later the bluffs overlooking
Lake Erie, and finally the Northwest in general,
ITie Story of a New Emjland Town. 175
until she has come in a certain sense to realize the
charter of Charles II., which gave her free sweep
as far as the Pacific. The celebrated Alexis de
Tocqueville, when he visited this country during
the presidency of Andrew Jackson, observed that
Connecticut sent two Senators of her own to Wash-
ington ; but upon inquiry he discovered that nine
members of the Senate first saw the light in this
state, and a dozen more were born of Connecticut
parents. I will not vouch for the figures, but I give
you the point of his remark. Now, this westward
migration, first greatly stimulated by the invention
of steamboats, acquired an immense volume after
the introduction of railways. Vast tracts of coun-
try, abounding in industrial resources, became
tributary to sundry centres of rail and water traf-
fic, such as Buffalo and Cleveland, Milwaukee and
Chicago, and such centres offered business induce-
ments which drew population westward as with a
mighty magnet. After a time, however, this sort
of depletion began to work its own cure ; for there
can be no doubt that Eastern cities are far more
prosperous through tlieir myriad dealings with ii
civilized West than they could ever have become
had the era of the Indian and the bison been pro-
longed.
In tills rapid and extensive series of industrial
176 American Political Ideas,
changes, those towns and villages naturally suffered
most that were left aside by the new routes of travel.
The mountain towns were the first to feel the
change, for the railroad shuns steep places. A
century ago the largest town in central Massachu-
setts was Petersham, with two thousand inhabi-
tants, and it was proposed to make it the shire
town of Worcester County ; to-day the city of
Worcester numbers more than one hundred thou-
sand souls, Petersham barely one thousand. With
Mid die town there was no topographical reason why
the railway between New Haven and Hartford
should not pass through it ; but undue reliance upon
the river seems to have encouraged a too conserva-
tive policy on the part of its citizens, while Meriden,
which had no such resource, was nerved to the ut-
most efforts. The result soon showed that, under
the new dispensation, nothing could make up for the
loss of the railroad. In the commercial race Mid-
dletown fell behind, and perhaps it was only the
branch line to Berlin that saved her from the fate
of the New England hill towns. The weight of the
blow was increased by some of the circumstances
which attended the Civil War.
I have already spoken of the maritime enter-
prise of Middletown at an earlier period. Her
shipping interests suffered severely in the War of
The, Story of a Nev} England Town. 177
1812, and some of the energy thus repressed sought
a vent for itself in manufactures. Of the manu-
facturing that sprang up so generally in New Eng-
land after 1812 Middletown had her fair share, and
in this her abundance of water power was emi-
nently favorable. But her shipping likewise re-
vived, and its prosperity lasted until the Civil War.
In the decade preceding that mighty convulsion
there was a distinctly nautical flavor about the
town. To this, no doubt, the fame of McDonough
in some ways contributed, for it was linked with
personal associations that drew naval officers here
from other parts of the country.
How well I remember the days when the gallant
Commodore Tattnall, last commander of the ^lerri-
mac, used to be seen on our streets, side by side,
perhaps, with General Mansfield, who was presently
to yield up his life on the field of Antietam, our
hero of the Civil War, as Meigs and Parsons were
our heroes of the War of Independence. Then
there was a thriving trade with the West Indies
and China, and visitors to what seemed an inland
town were surprised at the name of Custom House
over a brown-stone building on Main Street. But
with the Civil War began a decline in the Ameri-
can merchant marine, from which it has not yet
recovered. The cities fronting upon East Kiver
178 American Political Ideas,
are seven times as large as in 1850, yet when the
steamboat lands you at Peck Slip no such bewild-
ering forest of masts now greets your eyes as in that
earlier time. When this decline first became ap-
parent, people had an easy explanation at hand.
It was due, they said, to the depredations of the
Alabama and other Confederate cruisers. Yet it
continued to go on long after those mischievous
craft had been sent to the bottom and the bill of
damages paid. In truth, you can no more destroy
a nation's oceanic commerce with cruisers than
you can destroy a lawn by mowing it with a scythe.
If, after cutting down the grass, it does not spring
up with fresh luxuriance, it is because some baleful
influence has attacked the roots. It is much to be
feared that the drought under which our merchant
marine has withered has been due to unwise navi-
gation laws, to national legislation which has failed
to profit by the results of human experience in
other times and countries.
However that may be, it is clear that a great
change was wrought in the business aspects of
Middletown. With the decline in her shipping
interests she became more and more dependent
upon the prosperity of her manufactures, and
while these bravely flourished, every increase in
their activity made more manifest the need for
The Story of a New England Town. 179
better railway facilities than she enjoyed. To
supply this need the project for building the Air
Line Eailroad was devised, and speedily became
the theme of animated and sometimes acrimo-
nious debate. Among the topics of discussion on
which my youthful years were nourished, along
with predestination and original sin and Webster's
Seventh of March Speech, a certain preeminence
was assumed by the Air Line Railroad. I think
I found it more abstruse and perplexing than any
of the others. Its advocates were inclined to
paint the future in rose color, while beside the
gloom depicted by its adversaries the blackest
midnight would be cheerful. As usual in such
cases, there were elements of truth on both sides.
Great comfort was taken in the thought that the
proposed road would shorten by twenty miles or
80 the transit between New York and Boston, —
a point of much importance, perhaps ultimately
destined to be of paramount importance. What
was underestimated was the length of time that
would be needed for carrying a thoroughly eili-
cient double-track road through such a dlllicult
stretch of country, as well as the resistance to be
encount(Ted from powerful interests already vested
in older routes. For a long time th(3 fortunes of
the enterprise were such as might seem to justify
180 American Political Ideas,
the frowns and jeers of the scorners. The money
gave out, and things came to a standstill for years,
while long lines of embankment, mantled in ver-
dure, reminded one of moraines from an ancient
glacier, and about the freestone piers of a future
bridge over the road to Staddle Hill we boys used
to play in an antiquarian mood such as we might
have felt before the crumbling towers of Kenil-
worth. In later years, after the work was re-
sumed and the road put in operation, it turned
out that the burden of debt incurred was in dan-
ger of ruining many towns before the promised
benefits could be felt. For Middletown it was a
trying time : taxation rose to unprecedented rates,
thus frightening business away ; among the out-
ward symptoms of the embarrassment were ill-
kept streets for a few years, an unwonted sight,
and out of keeping with the traditional New
England tidiness. Yet the ordeal was but tempo-
rary. There was too much health and vigor in
the community to yield to the buffets of adverse
fortune. The town is becoming as much of a
railroad centre as circumstances require, and the
episode here narrated is over, leaving behind it an
instructive lesson for the student of municipal and
commercial history.
Yet if Middletown has not kept pace in mate-
Tlie Story of a New England Town. 181
rial development with some of her neighbor cities,
she has had her compensations. It has become
characteristic of us Yankees to brag of numbers
and bigness. A real estate agent lately asked me
if I did not wish to improve my property, and
when I asked his meaning, it appeared that his
idea of improvement was to cut away the trees in
the garden and build a house there, for some new
neighbor to stare in at my windows. To make
comfort, privacy, refined enjoyment, everything
in short, subservient to getting an income from
every available scrap of property, — such is the
aim in life which material civilization is too apt to
beget. I remember that John Stuart Mill some-
where, in dealing with certain economic questions,
suddenly pauses and asks if, after all, this earth is
going to be a better or a pleasanter place to live
in after its forests have all been cleared and its
rough places terraced, and there is but one deadly
monotony of brick and mortar, one deafening
jangle of hoofs upon stone pavements " from
Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand."
There are other things worth considering in a
community besides the number of individuals in
it and the value of their taxable property. The
city of Glasgow is three times as populous as
Ediiiburi:]! and a thousand times noisier, but
182 American Political Ideas.
it is the smaller city that engages our inter-
est and appeals to our higher sympathies. Of
late years, in weighing the results of my own
experience, after an acquaintance with nearly all
parts of the United States, from Maine to Cali-
fornia, and from Duluth to New Orleans, amount-
ing in many places to familiar intimacy, and after
more or less sojourning in the Old World, I feel
enabled to appreciate more clearly than of old the
qualities of the community in which it was my
good fortune to be reared. We understand things
only by contrast, and in early life we are apt to
mistake our immediate enyironment for the uni-
versal order of nature. What is more beautiful
than the view from one leafy hillside to another
in the purple distance across some intervening
lowland, especially if the valley be lighted with
the gleam of water sparkling in the sunshine?
Such pleasure daily greets the eye in Middletown,
and no child can help drinking it in ; but to
realize the power of it one must go to some town
that is set in a flat, monotonous landscape, and
then after some lapse of time come back and note
the enhanced effect of the familiar scene when
clothed in the novelty of contrast.
Looking back, then, upon Middletown, in the
light both of history and of personal experience,
\
]
The Story of a New England Town. 183
it seems to me that in an age and country where
material civilization has been achieving its grand-
est triumphs, but not without some attendant
drawbacks, in an age and country where the chief
danger has been that the higher interests of life
should be sacrificed to material ends, Middletown
has avoided this danger. From the reefs of mere
vulgarizing dollar worship her prow has been
steered clear. In the social life of the town, some
of the old-time charm, something of the courtli-
ness and quiet refinement that marked the days
of spinning-wheels and knee buckles, has always
remained, and is still to be found. Something
— very much indeed — has been due to institu-
tions of learning, the Wesleyan University and
the Berkeley Divinity School; much also to the
preservation of old traditions and mental habits
through sundry strong personalities, — the saving
remnant of which the prophet speaks : such men,
for example, as that eminent lawyer and scholar,
Jonathan Barnes, and his accomplished son, the
gentle preacher, taken from us all too early, or
that deeply religious and poetic soul, John l.ang-
don Dudley. I could mention others, but to single
out recent names might seem invidious. Those
tliat have sprung to my lips well fitted their en-
vironment. In the very aspect of these broad.
184 American Political Ideas,
quiet streets, with their arching trees, their digni-
fied and hospitable, sometimes quaint homesteads,
we see the sweet domesticity of the old New Eng-
land unimpaired. Nowhere is true worth of char-
acter more justly valued or cordially welcomed,
with small regard to mere conventional standards ;
and this I believe to be one of the surest marks
of high civilization. It was surely in an auspicious
day, fruitful in good results, that our forefathers
came down the river and made for themselves a
home in Mattabeseck.
INDEX
INDEX
Abderrahman, 107. ,
Achaian league, 68.
Aden, 132.
Adoption, 30.
^tolian league, 68.
Africa, English colonics in,
133.
Albany Congress, 87.
Alfred the Great, Winchester
celebration, xxvii, 147-149.
Algonquins, 160.
Amphiktyonic Council, 64.
Andros, 162.
Angeln, 97.
Angles, 110.
Anglo-American, 96.
Anglo-American federation,
xxxviii.
Anglo-American ideas, x\'i.
Anglo-American peoples hold
gateways of the world,
xxxi.
Anglo-Saxon, 96.
Api)omattox, 5.
Arable mark, 31.
Ariovi.stuH, 103.
Armada, the Invincible, 113.
Armies of Europe will be dis-
banded, 142.
Arminius, 5.
Arnold, M., xli, 10.
Asiaticization, 109, 118.
Athens, grandeur of, 49, 148;
incorporated demes of At-
tika, 60; old tribal divisions
modified, 60; school of po-
litical training, 64; mari-
time empire of, 67.
Attila, 104, 106, 120.
Augustus, 148.
Australia, 134.
Austria, 89.
Baker, Sir S., 133.
Bancroft, Hubert, 134.
Barnes, J., 183.
Barons, war of the, 112, 113,
121.
Basilcus, 59.
Bates, Prof. A., Ivii.
Batu, 105.
Belgium, 137.
Benefices, 38.
Berkeley Divinity School,
183.
Bern, 80.
Bible, The, xli.
Bibhops, My,^LA)rdi?, 152.
188
Index.
Blackstone, William, 152."!
Bonaparte, N., 114.
Bonapartism, 129.
Boroughs, special privileges
of, 58.
Boston, growth of, 23, 56; its
Common, 32.
Boundaries of United States,
93.
Branford, 160.
Brethren, my Lords, 152.
Buckle, T., xiv.
Bunsen, Baron E., xviii.
Bunyan, J., xli.
Burgundians, 110.
Burke, E., Ixii.
By-laws, 38.
C^sAR, J., 103, 105.
California, social experiments
in, 85.
Calvin, John, 169.
Cambridge, 153, 154, 155.
Canada under Old R6gime, 47.
Candolle, A. de, 136.
Canton, 53.
Carlyle on dollar-hunters, 121.
Centralized government,
weakness of, 124.
Century, 53.
Cervantes, xli.
Ceylon, 132.
Chdlons, battle of, 104.
Charles I., 113, 148.
Charles II., 162, 175.
Charles the Bold, 43.
Charles the Great, 105, 108.
Charles Martel, 108.
Charter, The Great, 156.
Chatham, Lord, 5.
Chester, 56.
Chicago, 134.
China and the Eastern Ques-
tion, xxviii.
Chinese, 107.
Christianity, 73.
Church, mediaeval, 110, 118. "
Cities in England and Amer-
ica, 26; origin of, 56.
City, the ancient, 51, 56-61,
77.
Civilization, its primary
phase, 98; long threatened
by neighbouring barbarism,
100.
Clan-system of political union,
30, 52.
Claudius, emperor, 73.
Clement IV., 112.
Cleveland, city of, 14.
Colenso, J. W., 134.
Colonies, how founded, 19.
Comitia, 59, 74c
Commendation, 39.
Commons, House of, 43.
Commons, origin of, 31.
Communal farming in Eng-
land, 38.
Index,
189
Communal landholding, 31.
Competition, Industrial, be-
tween Europe and Amer-
ica, 140.
Comte, A., xiv.
Confederation, articles of, 88,
Congo, 163.
Connecticut, colonial history
of, Ixxv; men of, defy James
II., 113; State of, 147, 156-
162, 175.
Connecticut River, 154, 159.
Connotation, Ivii-lix.
Constitution of the United
States, 88.
Continentals and British, 96.
Conway, Rev. M. D., xvii.
Cosmos, xi.
Cotton, John, 153, 169.
Coulanges, M. de, 71.
Cromwell, O., 5, 21.
Cuba, xxxii.
Curia, 53.
Dante, xli, 151.
Danube and Rhine Canal,
XXX.
Declaration of Independence,
157.
Delian confederacy, 67.
Demc, 54.
Denotation, Ivii-lix.
DrpartmentH of Franco, 55.
Dependencies, danger of gov-
erning them despotically,
75, 109, 129.
Dewey's victory at Manila,
xxxii.
Dickens, C, xli.
Didius Julianus, 115.
Diocletian, 76.
Domestic service in a New
England village, 15.
Dorchester, 152.
Dorset, 137.
Dover, men of, throw papal
bull into sea, 112.
Dudley, T., 153.
Dudley, J. L., 183.
Duke, 55.
Dutch republic, 79.
Ealdorman, 55, 59.
Ecclesia, 59.
Eden, Chuzzlewit'a, 57.
Electoral commission, 129.
Eliot, George, xli.
Eliot, John, 166.
Emancipation of slaves,
127.
Emerson, R. W., xli, Ixil.
England, maritime supremacy
of, 132.
English, colonization, xvi,
xxxii, 4.8, S^J; language, fu-
ture of, 1 36 ; self-govern men t
xvi; how pre.serve<i, 42, 79,
112-116; villages, 12..
190
Index,
English Race, ' ' Manifest Des-
tiny," li, xlvi, 149.
European history a pano-
rama, xii.
Europeans purchased lands
of Indians, 167.
Evolution, opposed by Royal
Institution, xxiv; basis of
Peace Movement, xxvii.
Fairfield, 163.
Famines, 123.
Farmington, 164.
Federal constitution, 158.
Federal union on great scale,
conditions of, 83 ; its dura-
bleness lies in its flexibility,
84.
Federalism, pacific implica-
tions of, 91, 116; will be
adopted by Europe, 136.
Federation and conquest, 66.
Federation of the world, xlv,
1.
Federations in Greece, 68.
Feudal system, origin of, 38.
Fick, A., 30.
Fisk, John, Ixxiv.
Fiske, John, thinker and his-
torian, xi, XV ; first lectures
in England, xv; letters,
xvii ; lectures at Royal Insti-
tution, xxiii; King Alfred
address, xxvii; conversa-
tion with, xxviii; literary
craftsmanship, xliv ; his
style, Ixiii-lxxiii.
France, political development
of, 44; contrasted with
England as a colonizer, 46,
119.
France and Germany, their
late war, 139 ; their political
weight a century hence,
138.
Francis I., 111.
Franklin, B., 87.
Franks, 105, 110.
Freeman, E. A., xvi, 5, 20, 28,
94, 95, 116.
Freiburg, 80.
French, colonization, xvi; vil-
lages, 12.
Gau, 54,
Gaul, Roman conquest of,
104.
Geneva, 80.
Gens, 29.
Georgia, 87.
Germany, conquered and con-
verted by Charles the
Great, 105; recent rise of,
xxviii.
Gibbon, E., Ixii.
Gibraltar, xxxi, 132.
Goethe, xli; conversations,
xxviii; greatness, xxxi.
Index,
191
Good style, xlvi, Iv; laws of,
Ivi.
Goths, 110.
Great states, method of form-
ing, 66; notion of their hav-
ing an inherent tendency to
break up, 81; difficulty of
forming, 99.
Grimm, J., 136.
Guilford, 160.
Haddon Hall, 139.
Hamburg, 137.
Hamilton, A., 125. '
Hampden, J., 21, 97.
Hannibal's invasion of Italy,
72.
Hartford, 154-156, 166.
Haynes, John, 154.
Heam, Professor, 134.
Henry VIII., 111.
Heretoga, 55.
Hindustan, village communi-
ties in, 34; cities in, 56.
History, science of, xiv.
Holland, 95, 138.
Holt, Henry, xix.
Hooker, U., xv.
Hooker, Thomas, 153, 154.
Housatonic, 1()3.
Howard of Effingham, 113.
Hudson River, 106.
Hundred, 53.
Hungary, 116.
Hunnish invasion of Europe,
104.
Hutchinson, Anne, 152.
Huxley, T. H., xv, xviii, xix,
XX, xxiii, xxiv; introduc-
tion, XXV.
Incorporation, 51, 70.
Iroquois tribes, 30.
James II, 113.
Jinghis Khan, 105.
Judiciary, federal, 91.
ICansas, 140.
Kemble, J., 31, 37. ^
Kingship among ancient Teu-
tons, 34.
La Salle, R., 133.
Lausanne, 80.
Lectures at University Col-
lege, London, xvii, xxii; at
Royal Institution, xxv.
Leo's defeat of the Saracens,
108.
Lewes, G. IL, Iv.
Lewes, battle of, 5.
Liegnitz, battle of, 106.
Lincoln, A., Ixii, 5.
Lincoln, city of, 56.
Livingstone, Dr., 133.
I>ombards, 110.
London, growth of, 23.
192
Index.
Louis VI., 109.
Louis XIV., 111.^
Ludlow, Roger, 163.
Macaulay, T. B., Ixii.
Madison, J., 125.
Maine, Sir H., 35, 56.
Maintz, 56.
Malta, 132.
Manifest Destiny, xlvi, Ixxv.
Manorial courts, 40.
Manors, origin of, 38.
Mansfield, Gen., 177.4
March meetings in New Eng-
land, 23.
Marius, C, 103.
Mark, 29-33, 53; in England,
36-41; meaning of the
word, 39.
Mark-mote, 33.
Massachusetts, 12, 28, 137,
152, 153, 161.
Mattabesett, 164, 165, 166.
May assemblies in Switzer-
land, 28.
Mayflower, 156.
Melbourne, city of, 134.
Middle Ages, turbulence of,
39, 78.
Middletown, Ixxiv, 147, 150,
162-178.
Military strength of civilized
world, its increase, 101-
107.
Mill, J. S., Ix, 181.
Milton, John, xli, Ixii.
Milford, 160.
Minnesota, 135, 140.
Mir, or Russian village, 34-
36.
Mississippi, 163.
Mohawks, 166.
Mohegans, 166.
Monaco, 149.
Mongolian Khans in Russia,
35.
Mongols, 116, 118.
Montenegro, 89.
Montesquieu, xiv.
Montfort, S. de, 5, 43, 63, 97.
Nasebt, battle of, 5.
Navies less dangerous than
standing armies, 115.
Nebraska, 140.
Nelson's statue in Trafalgar
Square, 114.
Netherlands, 149.
Nevada, 89, 137.
New England confederacy,
86, 161.
New England, 162.
New Haven, 152, 160-163.
New Hampshire, 152.
New Jersey, 158.
New London, 163, 164.
New York, 89, 137.
New Zealand, 135.
Index.
193
Newman, J. H., Ixii.
Norman conquest, 115.
North America, struggle for
possession of, 119.
Ojibwats, 166.
Omar, 107.
Pagus, 54.
Pameacha, 165.
Panama Canal, xxviii-xxx.
Paris, American dinner-party
in, li, 03, 98, 143.
Parish, its relation to town-
ship, 40.
Parkman, F., 47, 65.
Pater, Walter, Iv.
Pax romana, 73.
Peace of the world, how se-
cured, 101, 142.
Peerage of England, 20, 42.
Peloponnesian war, 68, 72.
Pequots, 164.
Persian war against Greece,
102.
Pestilences, 123.
Peters, Samuel, 171.
Petersham, 6, 176.
Philip, King, 120, 162.
Pliiiippines, xxix, xxxii; pol-
icy in regard to, xxxii-
xxxvi.
Phil.id.lphia, ir)S.
Phillii)H, George, 154.
Phratries, 53.
Pictet, A., 30.
Pilgrims, 156.
Plymouth, 161.
Poland, 116.
Pontiac, 120.
Population of United States
a century hence, 123.
Private property in land, 31.
Problem of political civiliza-
tion, 4, 27, 77, 100.
Protestantism and Catholi-
cism, political question at
stake between, 118.
Providence Plantations, 152.
Prussia conquered by Teu-
tonic knights, 105.
Punic Wars, 148.
Puritanism, 18.
Puritans of New England,
150, 151, 160, 163; their
origin, 20.
Pynchon, W., 155.
Quakers, 160.
Quebec, Wolfe's victory at,
5, 48, 117.
•
Ralston, W., xviil.
Rebellion against Charles I.,
113, 121.
Rcdivision of arable lands, 32.
Re-election of jtown ofTicera,
194
Index,
Renan, E., xliii.
Representation unknown to
Greeks and Romans, 51,
63-69; origin of, 62; fede-
ral, in United States, 89.
Rex, 59.
Rhode Island, 89, 152.
Rocky Hill, 159.
Roman law, 73.
Roman panorama, xiii.
Romanes, G. J. xliii.
Rome, plebeian revolution
at, 61; early stages of, 70;
secret of its power, 71;
advantages of its dominion,
73; causes of its political
failure, 74-77, 109, 124;
powerful influence of, in
' Middle Ages, 79, 110;
meaning of its great wars,
102, 148.
Roses, wars of the, 111,
Ross, D., 31.
Roxbury, 155.
Ruskin, J., Ixii.
Russia, Mongolian conquest
of, 106; village communi-
ties in, 32; its late war
against the Turks, 138; its
despotic government con-
trasted with that of France
under Old Regime, 35.
Royal Institution, xxiii; ob-
jects to Evolution, xxiv.
San Marino, 149.
Sanseer, 165.
Saracens, 107, 116, 118.
Saybrook, 159, 163.
Saye, Lord, 163.
Scandinavia, 116.
Scott, Walter, xli.
Sebethe, 164.
Secession, war of, 92, 126,
131.
Selectmen, 24.
Self-government, historic evo-
lution of, xlv; preserved
in England, 42, 79, 112;
lost in France, 44.
Shakespeare, xli, Ixii, 13, 136.
Shipman's Tavern, 150.
Shires, 54.
Shottery, cottage at, 13.
Sime, J., xviii, xix.
Smith, J., 133.
Social war, 71.
Sociology, laws of, xiii.
South Carolina, 87.
Southold, 160.
Sowheag, 167.
Spain, war with, xxxii; Roman
conquest of, 103.
Spanish colonization, xvi,
xxxii.
Sparta, 60, 63, 67.
Spencer, H., xii, xiv, xx, xxi,
Iv.
Stamford, 160, 163.
Index,
195
State sovereignty in America,
87.
Stevenson, R. L., Iv.
Stone, Samuel, 153, 154.
Strasburg, 56.
Strategic position of England,
112-116.
Stratford, 163.
Stubbs, W., 37, 40, 112, 116.
Suez, 132; Canal, xxviii.
Sumner's Creek, 165.
SwiSvS cantonal assemblies,
28, 149.
Switzerland, lesson of its
history 80, 142; self-gov-
ernment preserved in,
116.
Tacitus, 29, 33, 116.
Tailcoat, 154.
Talcott, 154.
Tariffs, privileges for few,
xxxvii; obstacles to federa-
tion, xxxvii; in America,
141.
Tax-taking despotisms, 35.
Tennyson, A., xli, 144.
Teutonic civilization con-
trastcii with Grajco- Roman,
52, 55, 57, 61, 78.
Teutonic knights, 105,
Teutonic village communities,
29.
Texas, 89, 135.
Thames river, 163."
Thegnhood, 20.
Thirty Years' War, 111.
Thought, high character of,
liii, liv.
Thukydides, 49.
Tocqueville, 27, 175.
Tourist in United States, 9.
Town, meaning of the word,
39.
Town-meetings, xlv, xlviii;
origin of, 28-41.
Town-names formed from
patronymics, 37.
Township in New England,
23; in western states, 26.
Tribe and shire, 54.
Turks, 108, 138.
Tyndall, J., xliii.
United States, xvi, 148, 149,
162; illustrating federation,
xlv, xlix.
Unknowable, xi.
Versailles, 13.
Vestry-meetings, 40.
Vico, xiv.
Victoria, .Australia, 134.
Village-mark, 31
Villages of New England, 10-
17.
Virgil. 151.
Virginia, parishes in, 26; in
196
. Index.
constitutional convention,
158.
Visigoths, 105.
Voltaire, xiv, xli.
Wallace, D. M., 10, 35.
War of independence, 87, 121.
Warfare, universal in early
times, 65; how diminished,
101 ; interferes with political
development, 108; less de-
structive now than in an-
cient times, 123; how effec-
tively waged by the most
pacific of peoples, 128.
Warham, John, 154.
Washington, city of, 57.
Washington, G., 5, 88, 97.
Watertown, 152-154.
Wesleyan University, 183.
Wessex, 147.
Wethersfield, 154, 155, 163.
Wheelwright, John, 152.
WilUam, the Norman, 148.
William III., 111.
Williams, Roger, 152.
Winchester Celebration,
xxvii, 147; contemplated
address at, xxviii.j
Windsor, 154, 155.
Winthrop, J., 153; the young-
er, 157.
Witenagemote, 42, 55.
Wolfe's victory at Quebec, 5,
48, 117.-
Worcester, 176.',
YOEKTOWN, 5.
THE END.
^V
