Morley pertinently asks: "Who shall measure the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations; that in France absolutism in Church and State fell before the sinewy genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, ship-money? That in France speculation had penetrated over the whole field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken towards application, while in England social principles were applied, before they received any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires?" Our progress of civilization in America, with all its lapses, is derived from a practical idea of liberty, from habits of thought which come from daily intercourse, and which are inductive; and it is upon this that our hope for our particular civilization rests. It is through such habit of mind that we can take advantage of whatever failures of theory there may be to reform our mistakes. It is thus that we illustrate to ourselves the essential co-relation between duty and right. The great characteristic of our race is its instinct for freedom. This instinct may not in the highest sense be called intellectual, but it is pertinacious and continuous, and thus it is illustrated as a potent factor throughout history.

1 "Voltaire," by John Morley, New York, 1878, p. 21.

Indeed, it may be said that self-preservation of inherited quality is a signal characteristic of all races, that each generation receives its qualities from its predecessor, and transmits them but slightly altered to the generations which follow. Whilst it is true that no adequate account can be given of current social and political phenomena until due allowance has been made for the modifying results which come from current social dynamic causes, yet, with all this, the main features of races preserve themselves from generation to generation with remarkable continuity. And this may be said with more force of the Anglo-Saxon race than of any other, for it holds a particular pre-eminence among all the races of the world as a preserver of its own hereditary qualities. The main features of civiliza tion, therefore, which belong to England and America are more eminently due to the circumstance of this persistence than to any other single cause.

Our unit has come through Hengest and Horsa, who planted him in England. There fixed, although he was overcome by the superior force and intellect of the Norman in his conquest, he persistently asserted himself until he appropriated his master, the Norman, and his conquest.3 In America he overcame the Span

"Ancient Law," by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, New York, 1875, p. 112. 2" When the keels of Hengest drew near the Kentish shore, they bore with them the germs of the American commonwealth, as well as the germs of the English kingdom." ("The English People in its Three Homes," by Edward A. Freeman, Philadelphia, 1882, p. 37.)

This notwithstanding the Norman was himself part Teuton.

ish and the French, and possessed the country. Mr. Fiske has indicated the importance of the battle of Quebec and the victory of Wolfe as the turning-point that determined which of the two nations, the English or the French, should finally predominate in America; but it seems to me that the answer to this question lies not so much in the issue of one battle, as in the fact of the pertinacity of the English. If defeated at the Heights of Abraham, there would probably only have been a postponement of the ascendancy of the English race, with little doubt that this ascendancy would afterwards have been acquired by the pertinacity of the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon unit is slow to move. As I have said, he lacks the quickness of his Celtic neighbor; but, slow as he is, this certain doggedness of purpose and directness which characterize him, give to him a firmer hold upon freedom than that possessed by any other type of human being. Transplanted in America, he has shown the strength of fibre and the power to assimilate all of the other less strong units which have come into contact with him.

Here he fixed his bounds by his sense of convenience, it must be owned, rather than by his intelligence or discrimination. He gave his acquiescence to a slavery not of his own race, but of another; and although for his own race the bounds were fixed without certainty as to the whole of human freedom,

1 "American Political Ideas," by John Fiske, New York, 1885, pp. 56 and 125.

they were more comprehensive than any which preceded them. Having advanced to this stage, he halted. Thereafter he progressed with rather a dull perception and a leaden step, when this same slavery claimed continued existence as a right, and came ag gressively across his path. As he permitted it to be recognized by the Constitution, as it was upheld by judicial decision, he did not disturb it, since it did not seem to be directly personal to him. But when its immediate champions threw down the gauge of battle and defied his own birthright, he arose like a giant, annihilated the wrong, reconstructed his civilization, and reasserted his freedom. Having taken this step, he again rested. He is now more easily aroused by reference to the past annihilated wrong, although it is a dead issue, than by many existing evils which lie immediately about him.

The same principle of action controls his conduct in industrial matters. Beguiled by a sense of convenience, he seems only faintly to feel the intrusion of the corporate trespasser upon his domain. He is told and he hears with dull ears of the treachery of his delegates chosen to guard his right. He only dimly sees the enemies masked behind the forms of law, and he is not alert to divine their purposes or pursue his remedy. Now and then, it is true, he is aroused by some special act of violence, but he soon falls again into his accustomed indifference. Meanwhile wrongs about him, stimulated by his inattention, continue to grow, until at last by their

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volume they are beginning to force themselves upon him. When he is at length brought face to face with the question of his freedom and can no longer delay the answer, then, however overborne by trick, chicane, and fraud, I have no doubt that he will again determine that "the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." At each successive great contest his realization gains some new force. The measurement of liberty is a little more carefully taken than ever before; the lesson is a little more closely learned, that vigilance is the price of liberty. Thus something is gained that is not thereafter lost; and so his civilization takes a new step which it partly at least keeps. When African slavery was stricken down, it was stricken down forever. That this sovereign unit when brought face to face with the new antagonism will rout it, I think there can be no doubt. The only present question is whether his intelligence may not be stimulated to realize the problem of his right-to overcome the antagonisms to that right-before a resort to blood and demolition becomes necessary.

Mr. Freeman traces the lineage of the unit to Arminius, that historic hero of the Teutonic race.1

"I have little doubt that, if the distinction is to be drawn at all, Arminius and his fellows would be found to belong to the Low-Dutch rather than to the High-Dutch division of the Teutonic race. But it may be safer to look on that distinction as one of later date, and to say that, up to the fifth century, the Teuton whose descendants were to abide in Germany and the