world's transformation, from the discoveries, the adventure, the romance of the sixteenth century, with its dreams of unbounded wealth in the far Indies and marvels at the ends of the earth, to the sober commerce and material might of the twentieth, with its altered dreams, of a world mastered, if not united, by the power of armed fleets patrolling it from end to end, in the interests of peace and European and American trade. At its outset American history discloses novel picture of men out of an old world set upon the coasts of a new to do the work of pioneers, without suitable training either of thought or hand,-men schooled in an old civilization, puzzled, even daunted, by the wilderness in which they found themselves as by a strange and alien thing, ignorant of its real character, lacking all the knowledge and craft of the primitive world, lacking everything but courage, sagacity, and a steadfast will to succeed. As they pushed their gigantic task they were themselves transformed. The unsuitable habits of an old world fell away from them. Their old blood bred a new stock, and the youth of the race to which they belonged was renewed. And yet they did not break with the past, were for long scarcely conscious of their own transformation, held their thoughts to old channels, were frontiersmen with traditions not of the frontier, traditions which they cherished and held very dear, of a world in which there were only ancient kingdoms and a civilization set up and perfected time out of mind. Their muscles hardened to the work of the wilderness, they learned woodcraft and ranged the forests like men with the breeding, the quick instincts, the ready resource in time of danger of the Indian himself, and yet thought upon deep problems of religion, pondered the philosophy of the universities, were partisans and followers of statesmen and parties over sea, looked to have their fashions of dress sent to them, with every other old-world trapping they could pay for, by the European ships which diligently plied to their ports. Nowhere else, perhaps, is there so open and legible a record of the stiffness of thought and the flexibility of action in men, the union of youth and age, the dominion of habit reconciled with an unspoiled freshness of bold initiative And with the transplantation of men out of the old world into a wilderness went also the transplantation of institutions,-with the same result. The new way of life and association thrust upon these men reduced the complex things of government to their simples. Within those untouched forests they resumed again, as if by an unconscious instinct, the simple organization of village communities familiar to their race long centuries before, or here and there put palisades about a group of huts meant to serve for refuge and fortress against savage enemies lurking near at hand in the coverts, and lived in their "hundreds " again under captains, to spread at last slowly into counties with familiar sheriffs and quarter-sessions. It was as if they had brought their old-time polity with them, not in the mature root nor even in the young cutting, but in the seed merely, to renew its youth and yield itself to the influences of a new soil and a new environment. It was drawn back to its essential qualities, stripped of its elaborate growth of habits, as they themselves were. All things were touched, as it were, by the light of an earlier age returned. The study of American history furnishes, as a consequence, materials such as can be found nowhere else for a discrimination between what is accidental and what is essential in English political practice.> Principles developed by the long and intricate processes of the history of one country are here put to experimental test in another, where every element of life is simplified, every problem of government reduced to its fundamental formulæ. There is here the best possible point of departure, for the student who can keep his head and who knows his European history as intimately as he knows his American, for a comparative study of institutions which may some day yield us a sane philosophy of politics which shall forever put out of school the thin and sentimental theories of the disciples of Rousseau. This is the new riches which the study of American history is to afford in the light that now shines upon it: not national pride merely, nor merely an heroic picture of men wise beyond previous example in building States, and uniting them under a government at once free and strong, but(a real understanding of the nature of liberty, of the essential character and determining circumstances of self-government, the fundamental contrasts of race and social development, of temper and of opportunity, which of themselves make governments or mar them. It may well yield us, at any rate, a few of the first principles of the natural history of institutions./ The political history of America was the outcome of a constitutional struggle which concerned Englishmen in England no less deeply than it concerned Englishmen in the colonies, a struggle whose motives were compounded both of questions of conscience and of questions of civil liberty, of longings to be free to think and of longings to be free to act. And Englishmen on the two sides of the sea were not wholly divorced in the issue of that struggle. Not America alone, but the power to rule without principle and restraint at home as well, was once for all cut off from the crown of England. But there was sharp contrast, too, between the effects wrought in England and the effects wrought in America. On one side the sea an ancient people won their final battle for constitutional government; on the other side a new people was created,-a people set free to work out a new experience both in the liberty of its churches and in its political arrangements, to gain a new consciousness, take on a distinctive character, transform itself from a body of loosely associated English colonies into a great commonwealth, not English nor yet colonial merely, but transmuted, within little more than a generation, into a veritable nation, marked out for an independent and striking career. By the At the Revolution the American States did hardly more than disengage themselves from the English dominion. Their thoughts, their imaginations, were still held subject to policy and opinion over sea. close of the War of 1812, these last, impalpable bonds were also thrown off. American statesmen had got their freedom of thought, and, within a generation, were the leaders of a nation and a people apart. One has only to contrast the persistent English quality and point of view of the English colonies of to-day, self-governing communities though most of them are, which have led their own lives for generations together under parliaments and ministers of their own free choosing, with the distinctive character of the United States to realize how much of the history of nations is spiritual, not material, a thing, not of institutions, but of the heart and the imagination. This is one of the secrets American history opens to the student, the deepest of all secrets, the genesis of nationality, the play of spirit in the processes of history. Of course the present separateness and distinctive character of the United States among the nations is due in part to the mixture of races in the makeup of their people. Men out of every European race, men out of Asia, men out of Africa have crowded in, to the bewilderment alike of the statesmen and of the historian. An infinite crossing of strains has made a new race. And yet there is a mystery here withal. Where, when, in what way, have our institutions and our life as a people been turned to new forms and into new channels by this new union and chemistry of bloods? There has been no break in our constitutional development. Nothing has been done of which we can confidently say, This would not have been done had we kept the pure Saxon strain. All peoples have come to dwell among us, but they have merged their individuality in a national character already formed; have been dominated, changed, absorbed. We keep until now some of the characteristic differences of organization and action transplanted to this continent when races were separate upon it. We single out the Dutch element in the history of New York, the French element in the history of Louisiana, the Spanish influence in the far West. But these things remain from a time when Dutch and French and Spanish had their seats and their power apart and were independent rivals for the possession of the continent. Since they were fused they have given us nothing which we can distinguish as their own. The French who have come to us since that final settlement on the heights of Quebec have contributed nothing distinctive to our civilization or our order of government. The Dutch who have been immigrants amongst us since New Netherlands became New York have no doubt strengthened our stock, but they have adopted our character and point of view. No foreign stock long keeps its identity in our affairs. The fact should a little daunt those who make much of physical heredity and speak of the persistence of race characteristics as a thing fixed and invariable, if they are to apply their theory to communities which are dominated by one and the same national idea, and fused to make a common stock. It is where races act separately that they act in character and with individual distinction. In this again the history of the United States demonstrates the spiritual aspects of political development. Nations grow by spirit, not by blood; and nowhere can the significant principle of their growth be seen more clearly, upon a more fair and open page, than in the history of the United States. It is this principle which throws a light as if of veritable revelation upon the real nature of liberty, as a thing bred, not of institutions! nor of the benevolent inventions of statesmen, but of the spiritual forces of which institutions themselves are the offspring and creation. To talk of giving to one people the liberties of another is to talk of making a gift of character, a thing built up by the contrivance of no single generation, but by the slow providence which binds generations together by a common training. From whatever point of view you approach it, American history gives some old lesson a new plainness, clarification, and breadth. It is an offshoot of European history and has all its antecedents on the other side of the sea, and yet it is so much more than a mere offshoot. Its processes are so freshened and clarified, its records are so abundant and so accessible, it is spread upon so wide, so open, so visible a field of observation, that it seems like a plain first chapter in the history of a new age. As a stage in the economic development of modern civilization, the history of America constitutes the natural, and invaluable, subject-matter and book of praxis of the political economist. Here is industrial development worked out with incomparable logical swiftness, simplicity, and precision,-a swiftness, simplicity, and precision impossible amidst the rigid social order of any ancient kingdom. It is a study, moreover, not merely of the make-up and setting forth of a new people, but also of its marvellous expansion, of processes of growth, both spiritual and material, hurried forward from stage to stage as if under the experimental touch of some social philosopher, some political scientist making of a nation's history his laboratory and place of demonstration. The twentieth century will show another face. The stage of America grows crowded like the stage of Europe. The life of the new world grows as complex as the life of the old. A nation hitherto wholly devoted to domestic development now finds its first task roughly finished and turns about to look curiously into the tasks of the great world at large, seeking its special |