14

THE NEW AMERICA

CHAPTER I

THE UNITED STATE

In the beginning, like the kingdom of England,' and the kingdom of Israel, the American republic was in the possession of thirteen tribes. We see, in reviewing the political histories of these countries, that the process of integration follows certain laws; that the capital, whether it be Jerusalem or London or Washington, draws to itself power and authority for the whole; that the centripetal and synthetic forces which are at work in every such State, pause only when they have achieved a unit, or, as sometimes happens, met with a revolution. Here, developing in a theatre of operations relatively small, the scattered island realms from Kent

166 Thus, after a century and a half, was gradually established in Britain what has been called the Heptarchy. But this term is incorrect . . . if the smaller and dependent ones are reckoned, the number must be considerably increased." In 827 the States were thirteen in number and ". were nominally united into one State."-v. Hume, "History of England."

2 "The entire country was divided into thirteen lots, the descendants of Joseph governing the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh had each a portion assigned to them, while the tribes of Levi were given the forty-eight cities and the tithes of the whole land for a maintenance."-E. Ledrain, "Histoire d'Israel."

to Connaught become united kingdoms, and, finally, the United Kingdom of to-day.1

Again, the great nation which has, in recent times, risen to note under the title of Germany, consisted in the eighteenth century of nearly three hundred small and despotic states. Any national sentiment was less encouraged by the loose bonds of German Empire than by a national literature then in its birth-throes. As far as the general politics of Europe were concerned the petty German States were a negligible quantity." Compare their condition with the modern united State of Germany.

The case of America, therefore, is only peculiar in this that it shows on a larger scale than ever before witnessed on the globe, human nature and inherent tendencies battling with hard and fast political theories; struggling, and not unavailingly, against a written National Constitution which it has outgrown.

It is peculiar and it is of universal interest because we see here human nature, which craves ornament and prestige and expansion and centralization, and abhors rigidity, is slowly but surely winning the battle against the eighteenth-century doctrinaires and the demagogues.

After the war of separation from the mother State

1 "Although England was not firmly cemented into one State under Egbert, as is usually represented, yet the power of this monarch and the union of so many provinces opened the prospect of future tranquillity; and it appeared more probable that the Anglo-Saxons would thenceforth become formidable to their neighbours, than be exposed to their inroads and devastations."-Hume, chap. iii. A passage of modern applicability.

2 "The union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets the national spirit was kept alive and the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges of the electors, the provinces and the free and imperial cities."-Gibbon.

and prior to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787 there were thirteen small republics scattered along the Atlantic seaboard, each with distinct possibilities of nationhood, each with the germs within it of a separate North American race.' How widely the colonies differed has often been described. Bear in mind that communication was rendered difficult by distance and bad roads or no roads. It took as long to travel from Boston to Charleston as it would then take a European to go from Paris to St. Petersburg or from London to New York. What a field for speculation is thus afforded to the historical student by a contemplation of these states in embryo. While homogeneity now seems to be the law and destiny of those peoples sprung originally from the same ethnic stock, it may be retarded for centuries by the creation of national frontiers, by difference of language, of climate, of diet, of occupation, of chance conditions of existence. Differences far greater than those which could ever have distinguished the Angles from the Jutes, the Saxons from the Mercians, could they have maintained their petty boundaries for five hundred years, were inevitable for the Virginians, the New Yorkers, and the men of Massachusetts.

It is hard not to let the fancy dwell on the Virginian or Carolinian planter, with his high spirit, his feudal interests, his slaves, and his estates, gradually building up a form of government closely resembling that which was just then developing in the kingdom from which he had emigrated. There were boisterous demagogic spirits in Massachusetts, but the leaders, such as John

1 In 1777, the form was "The United States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island," etc.