American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History Part 1

American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History.

by John Fiske.

PREFACE.

In 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 Professor Huxley, the course was repeated at University College in London. The lectures there were attended by very large audiences, and awakened such an interest in American history that I was invited 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 Inst.i.tution.

In the three lectures which were written in response to this invitation, and which are now published in this little volume, I have endeavoured to ill.u.s.trate some of the fundamental ideas of American politics by setting forth their relations to the general history of mankind. It is impossible thoroughly to grasp the meaning of any group of facts, in any department of study, until we have duly compared them with allied groups of facts; and the political history of the American people can be rightly understood only when it is studied in connection with that general process of political evolution 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 a.s.semblies 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 political problem which we are (thus far successfully) solving is the very same problem upon which all civilized peoples have been working ever since civilization 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. When thus considered in the light of the comparative 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 interesting 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 statesmans.h.i.+p of Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln appears in the n.o.blest 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 Yorktown and at Appomattox. When we duly realize this, and further come to see how the two great branches of the English race have the common mission of establis.h.i.+ng 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 treatment. The lectures are printed exactly as they were delivered at the Royal Inst.i.tution, more than four years ago. On one point of detail some change will very likely by and by be called for. In the lecture on the Town-meeting I have adopted the views of Sir Henry Maine as to the common holding of the arable land in the ancient German mark, and as to the primitive character of the periodical redistribution of land in the Russian village community. It now seems highly probable that these views will have to undergo serious modification in consequence of the valuable evidence lately brought forward by my friend Mr. Denman Ross, in his learned and masterly treatise on "The Early History of Landholding among the Germans;" but as I am not yet quite clear as to how far this modification will go, and as it can in nowise affect the general drift of my argument, I have made no change in my incidental remarks on this difficult and disputed question.

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 audiences; yet they have been received in many places with unlooked-for favour. The lecture on "Manifest 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Milwaukee; in Appleton and Waukesha, Wis.; Portland, Lewiston, and Brunswick, Me.; Lowell, Concord, Newburyport, Peabody, Stoneham, Maiden, Newton Highlands, and Martha's Vineyard, Ma.s.s.; Middletown and Stamford, Conn.; Newburg and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; Orange, N.J.; and at Cornell University and Haverford College. In several of these places the course was given.

PETERSHAM, _September 13, 1884_.

AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS.

I.

_THE TOWN-MEETING._

The traveller from the Old World, who has a few weeks at his disposal for a visit to the United States, usually pa.s.ses straight from one to another of our princ.i.p.al cities, such as Boston, New York, Was.h.i.+ngton, or Chicago, stopping for a day or two perhaps at Niagara Falls,--or, perhaps, 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 peculiarities, physical and social, which characterize the different portions of our country; and in this there is nothing to complain of, since the knowledge gained in a vacation-journey cannot well be expected to be thorough or profound. The traveller, however, who should visit the United States in a more leisurely way, with the purpose 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 comparative 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 traditions, is at the same time most completely American in so far as it has most distinctly ill.u.s.trated and most successfully represented those political ideas which have given to American history its chief significance in the general work of civilization.

The United States are not unfrequently spoken of as a "new country," in terms which would be appropriate if applied to Australia or New Zealand, 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 England, 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-fas.h.i.+oned in aspect,--much that one can approach in an antiquarian 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.o.blest and most useful aristocracies that has ever existed; so, on the other hand, as we consider the possible action of similar causes upon the _personnel_ and upon the occupations of rural New England, we are unwillingly forced to contemplate the 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 England 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, perhaps 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 England 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 houses may stand a thousand feet apart from their neighbours on either side, while between the poorer ones there may be intervals of from twenty to one hundred feet, but they are never found crowded together in blocks. Built in this capacious fas.h.i.+on, a village of a thousand inhabitants may have a main street more than a mile in length, with half a dozen crossing streets losing themselves 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 Highlands. The picturesque and cosy cottage at Shottery, where Shakespeare used to do his courting, will serve very well as a sample of the humblest sort of old-fas.h.i.+oned New England farm-house. But most of the dwellings in the village come between these extremes. They are plain neat wooden houses, in capaciousness more like villas than cottages. A New England village street, laid out in this way, is usually very picturesque and beautiful, and it is highly characteristic. In comparing it with things in Europe, where one rarely finds anything at all like it, one must go to something very different from a village. As you stand in the Court of Heroes at Versailles and look down the broad and n.o.ble 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 land 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 s.p.a.cious fas.h.i.+on of building has been retained for streets occupied by dwelling-houses. In Cleveland--a city on the southern sh.o.r.e 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 architectural 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 n.o.ble indeed. The vistas remind one of the nave and aisles of a huge cathedral.

Now this generous way in which a New England village is built is very closely a.s.sociated 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 abundance of land. As a rule the head of each family 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 a.s.sociated with the owners.h.i.+p of land; and the legal differences between real and personal property, especially as regards ease of transfer, have been reduced to the smallest minimum that practical convenience will allow. Each householder, therefore, though an absolute proprietor, cannot be called a miniature lord of the manor, because there exists no permanent dependent cla.s.s such as is implied in the use of such a phrase. Each larger proprietor attends in person to the cultivation of his own land, a.s.sisted 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 daughters. 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 be proper to address in a patronizing tone, or who would not consider it a gross insult to be offered a s.h.i.+lling. As with poverty, so with dram-drinking and with crime; all alike are conspicuous by their absence. In a village of one thousand inhabitants there will be a poor-house where five 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 persons 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 corn and cuts his own firewood has very likely a piano 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 afternoon. In former times theological questions largely occupied 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 mysteries 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.

A state of society so completely democratic as that here described has not often been found in connection with a very high and complex civilization. In contemplating these old mountain villages of New England, one descries slow modifications 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 pa.s.s 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 universities to prepare for a professional career, and the daughters marry merchants or lawyers in the cities. 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 cla.s.s of people very different from the landholding descendants of the Puritans. When once a factory is established near a village, one no longer feels free to sleep with doors unbolted.

It will be long, however, I trust, before the simple, earnest and independent type of character that has been nurtured on the Blue Hills of Ma.s.sachusetts and the White Hills of New Hamps.h.i.+re 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 virtues, to be practised in such an exaggerated degree as to become vices, while the ordinary laws of right and wrong are forgotten." [1] 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 reverence for that grand spirit of Hebraism, of which Mr. Matthew Arnold speaks, to which we owe the Bible and Christianity.

No loftier ideal has ever been conceived than that of the Puritan who would fain have made of the world a City of G.o.d. If we could sum up all that England owes to Puritanism, the story would be a great one indeed.

As regards the United States, we may safely say that what is n.o.blest in our history to-day, and of happiest augury for our social and political future, is the impress left upon the character of our people by the heroic men who came to New England early in the seventeenth century.

The settlement of New England by the Puritans 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 enterprise, for political or commercial reasons. The aim has been--on the part of governments--to annoy some rival power, or to get rid of criminals, or to open some new avenue of trade, or--on the part of the people--to escape from straitened circ.u.mstances at home, or to find a refuge from religious persecution. In the settlement of New England none of these motives were operative except the last, and that only to a slight extent. The Puritans who fled from Nottinghams.h.i.+re to Holland in 1608, and twelve years afterwards crossed the ocean in the _Mayflower_, may be said to have been driven from England by persecution. But this was not the case with the Puritans who between 1630 and 1650 went from Lincolns.h.i.+re, Norfolk and Suffolk, and from Dorset and Devons.h.i.+re, and founded the colonies of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut. These men left their homes at a time when Puritanism was waxing powerful and could not be a.s.sailed with impunity. They belonged to the upper and middle cla.s.ses 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 n.o.bility 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 ancient lords of the soil, thus thrust down into the second rank, formed that great body of freeholders, the stout gentry and yeomanry of England, who were for so many ages the strength of the land." [2] It was from this ancient thegnhood that the Puritan settlers of New England were mainly descended. It is no unusual thing for a Ma.s.sachusetts family to trace its pedigree to a lord of the manor in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The leaders of the New England emigration were country gentlemen of good fortune, similar in position to such men as Hampden and Cromwell; a large proportion of them had taken degrees at Cambridge. The rank and file were mostly intelligent and prosperous yeomen. The lowest ranks of society were not represented in the emigration; and all idle, s.h.i.+ftless, or disorderly people were rigorously refused admission into the new communities, 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 of _picked men_.

Their Puritanism was the natural outcome of their free-thinking, combined with an earnestness of character which could constrain 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 feeling of rancour towards their native land, in order that, by dint of whatever hards.h.i.+p, they might establish in the American wilderness what should approve itself to their judgment as a G.o.d-fearing community. It matters little that their conceptions were in some respects narrow. In the unflinching adherence to duty which prompted their enterprise, and in the sober intelligence with which 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 establishment of permanent distinctions, social or political. Immediately on their arrival in New England, the settlers proceeded to form for themselves a government as purely democratic as any that has ever been seen in the world. Instead of scattering about over the country, the requirements of education and of public wors.h.i.+p, as well as of defence against Indian attacks, obliged them to form small village communities. As these villages multiplied, the surface of the country came to be laid out in small districts (usually from six to ten miles in length and breadth) called _towns.h.i.+ps_. Each towns.h.i.+p contained its village together with the woodlands surrounding it. In later days two or more villages have often grown up within the limits of the same towns.h.i.+p, 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 towns.h.i.+p was vested in the TOWN-MEETING,--an inst.i.tution which in its present form is said to be peculiar to New England, but which, as we shall see, has close a.n.a.logies 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 towns.h.i.+p is expected to be present, 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 community in these a.s.semblies; but this was soon found to be a c.u.mbrous way of transacting public business, and as early as 1635 we find _selectmen_ chosen to administer the affairs of the towns.h.i.+p during the intervals between the a.s.semblies. 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 towns.h.i.+p. Besides these, there are chosen a town-clerk, a town-treasurer, a school-committee, a.s.sessors of taxes, overseers of the poor, constables, surveyors of highways, fence-viewers, and other officers. In very small towns.h.i.+ps the selectmen themselves may act as a.s.sessors 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 a.s.signed to the other officers; and whenever circ.u.mstances may seem to require it they are authorized to call a town-meeting. The selectmen are thus the princ.i.p.al town-magistrates; and through the annual election their responsibility to the town is maintained at the maximum. Yet in many New England towns re-election of the same persons year after year has 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-purposes, and of providing for miscellaneous emergencies by what might be termed special legislation. 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 a.s.sembly of the whole people becomes impracticable in a large community, so when the population of a towns.h.i.+p has 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, according to the system adopted in London in the reign of Edward I. In America, therefore, the distinction between cities and towns has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a cathedral, but refers solely to differences in the communal or munic.i.p.al government. In the city the common council, as a representative body, replaces (in a certain sense) the town-meeting; a representative government is subst.i.tuted for a pure democracy. But the city officers, like the selectmen of towns, are elected annually; and in no case (I believe) has munic.i.p.al 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 New England that the towns.h.i.+p system is to be found in its completeness. In several southern and western states the administrative 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 towns.h.i.+p systems. In some of the western states settled by New 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 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 towns.h.i.+p 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 public 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 country 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 principle" 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 preserve tranquillity in the mutual relations of forty powerful states, while keeping the people everywhere as far as possible in direct contact with the government; such is the political problem which the American Union exists for the purpose of solving; and of this great truth every American citizen is supposed to have some glimmering, however crude.

It has been said that the town-governments of New England were established without any conscious reference to precedent; but, however this may be, they are certainly not without precedents and a.n.a.logies, 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 Const.i.tution," Mr. Freeman gives an eloquent account of the May a.s.semblies of Uri and Appenzell, when the whole people elect their magistrates for the year and vote upon amendments 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 his life to have looked upon it. But I am unable to see in what respect the town-meeting in Ma.s.sachusetts differs from the _Landesgemeinde_ or cantonal a.s.sembly in Switzerland, save that it is held in a town-hall and not in the open air, that it is conducted with somewhat less of pageantry, and that the freemen who attend do not carry arms even by way of ceremony. In the Swiss a.s.sembly, as Mr.

Freeman truly observes, we see exemplified the most democratic phase of the old Teutonic const.i.tution 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 inst.i.tutions, on the White Mountains and on the Alps, not only closely 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-community of the ancient Teutons, of which such strict counterparts are found in other parts of the Aryan world as to make it apparent that in its essential features it must be an inheritance from prehistoric Aryan antiquity. In its Teutonic form the primitive village-community (or rather, the spot inhabited by it) is known as the _Mark_,--that is, a place defined by a boundary-line. One characteristic 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 progenitor; and in this respect the mark-community agrees with the _gens_, [Greek: _ginos_], or _clan_. The earliest form of political union in the world is one which rests, not upon territorial contiguity, but upon I blood-relations.h.i.+p, either real or a.s.sumed through the legal fiction of adoption. In the lowest savagery blood-relations.h.i.+p is the only admissible or conceivable ground for sustained common action among groups of men. Among peoples which wander 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 a.s.sociated through ties of blood-relations.h.i.+p, is what we call a _clan_.

When by the development of agricultural pursuits the nomadic mode of life is brought 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 dialects from which the existing languages of Europe are descended, the Aryan tribes were pa.s.sing from a purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incipient agricultural stage, somewhat like that which characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in the seventeenth century. The comparative study of inst.i.tutions leads to results in harmony with this view, showing us the mark-community of our Teutonic ancestors with the clear traces of its origin in the more primitive clan; though, with Mr. Kemble, I do not doubt that by the time of Tacitus the German tribes had long since reached the agricultural stage.

Territorially the old Teutonic mark consisted of three divisions. There was the _village mark_, 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 _common mark_, or border-strip of untilled land, wherein 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 community. 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 estate.[3] Of the three kinds of land the common mark, save where curtailed or usurped by lords in the days of feudalism, has generally remained public property to this day. The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of towns and cities in England and the United States most probably originated from the coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby the border-land used in common by all was brought into the centre of the new aggregate. In towns of modern date this origin of the common is of course forgotten, and in accordance with the general law by which the useful thing after discharging its functions survives for purposes of ornament, it is introduced 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 a.s.semblage 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 account; and at irregular intervals, as fluctuations in population seemed to require it, a thorough-going redivision was effected. 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 a.s.sembly 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 admission of new families into the village, and in general transacted what was then regarded as the public business of the community. In all essential respects this village a.s.sembly or _mark-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 inst.i.tutions. In Russia and in Hindustan we find the same primitive form of social organization existing with very little change at the present day. Alike in Hindu and in Russian village-communities we find the group of habitations, each despotically ruled by a _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 Village Elders, and in other places by a Headman whose office is sometimes described as hereditary, but is more probably elective, the choice being confined, as in the case of the old Teutonic kings.h.i.+p, to the members of a particular family. In the Russian village, on the other hand, the government is conducted by an a.s.sembly at which every head of a household is expected to be present and vote on all matters of public concern. This a.s.sembly elects the Village 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 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 decisions." To those who are in the habit of regarding Russia simply as a despotically-governed country, 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 a.n.a.logous to the government of France under the Old Regime, it may seem incredible that the decisions of a village-a.s.sembly should not admit of appeal to a higher authority. But in point of fact, no two despotic governments could be less 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 thirteenth to the fifteenth century held the Russian people in subjection. This Mongolian government was--to use a happy distinction suggested by Sir Henry Maine--a tax-taking despotism, not a legislative despotism. The conquerors exacted tribute, but did not interfere with the laws and customs of the subject people. When the Russians drove out the Mongols they exchanged 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 imperial government exacts from each village-community 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-community, the Russians still retain an element of sound political life, the importance of which appears when we consider that five-sixths of the population of European Russia is comprised in these communities. The tax a.s.sessed 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 towns.h.i.+p, to the primeval embryonic stage of which they correspond.

From these ill.u.s.trations we see that the mark, or self-governing village-community, is an inst.i.tution which must be referred back to early Aryan times. Whether the mark ever existed in England, in anything like the primitive form in which it is seen in the Russian _mir_, is doubtful. Professor Stubbs (one of the greatest living authorities on such a subject) is inclined to think that the Teutonic settlers of Britain had pa.s.sed beyond this stage before they migrated from Germany.[4] 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.,[5] we have unimpeachable evidence of a time when the town was regarded as the dwelling-place of a clan. Indeed, the comparative rarity of the word _mark_ in English laws, charters, and local names (to which Professor Stubbs alludes) 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 village, and secondarily the village with its periphery. _Town_ means originally a hedge or enclosure, and secondarily the spot that is enclosed: the modern German _zaun_, a "hedge," preserves the original meaning. But traces of the mark in England are not found in etymology alone. I have 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 common has continued until quite recently. The local legislation of the mark appears in the _tunscipesmot_,--a word which is simply Old-English for "town-meeting." In the s.h.i.+res where the Danes acquired a firm foothold, the towns.h.i.+p was often called a "by"; and it had the power of enacting its own "by-laws" or town-laws, as New England towns.h.i.+ps have to-day. But above all, the a.s.sembly of the markmen has left vestiges of itself in the const.i.tution of the parish and the manor. The mark or towns.h.i.+p, transformed by the process of feudalization, becomes the manor. The process of feudalization, throughout western Europe in general, was no doubt begun by the inst.i.tution of Benefices, or "grants of Roman provincial land by the chieftains of the" Teutonic "tribes which overran the Roman Empire; such grants being conferred on their a.s.sociates upon certain conditions, of which the commonest was military service." [6] The feudal regime naturally reached its most complete development in France, which affords the most perfect example of a Roman territory overrun and permanently held in possession by Teutonic conquerors. Other causes a.s.sisted 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 practice of commendation, by which free allodial proprietors were transformed into the tenants of a lord, became fas.h.i.+onable and was gradually extended to all kinds of estates. In England the effects of feudalization were different from what they were in France, but the process was still carried very far, especially under the Norman kings. The theory grew up that all the public land in the kingdom was the king's waste, and that all landholders were the king's tenants. Similarly in every towns.h.i.+p the common land was the lord's waste and the landholders were the lord's tenants. Thus the towns.h.i.+p 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 encroachments of the lord," as Sir Henry Maine observes, "were in proportion to the want of certainty in the rights of the community." The lord's proprietors.h.i.+p gave him no authority to disturb customary rights. The old towns.h.i.+p-a.s.sembly 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 towns.h.i.+p into the manor, however, was but partial: along with it went the partial metamorphosis of the towns.h.i.+p into the parish, or district a.s.signed to a priest. Professor Stubbs has pointed out that "the boundaries of the parish and the towns.h.i.+p or towns.h.i.+ps with which it coincides are generally the same: in small parishes the idea and even the name of towns.h.i.+p 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 towns.h.i.+p for church purposes." [7] The parish officers, including overseers of the poor, a.s.sessors, and way-wardens, are still elected in vestry-meeting by the freemen of the towns.h.i.+p. And while the jurisdiction 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 outside that jurisdiction come under the management of the vestry."

In England, therefore, the free village-community, though perhaps nowhere found in its primitive integrity, has nevertheless survived in partially transfigured forms which have played no unimportant part in the history of the English people. In one shape or another the a.s.sembly of freemen for purposes of local legislation has always existed. The Puritans who colonized New England, therefore, did not invent the town-meeting. They were familiar already with the proceedings of the vestry-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, with such limitations as they involved, and to reintegrate the separate jurisdictions into one,--and forthwith the old a.s.sembly of the towns.h.i.+p, 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 English language that I need to argue the point that the preservation of local self-government is of the highest importance for the maintenance of a rich and powerful national life. As we contemplate the vicissitudes of local self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world, we see the contrasted fortunes of France and England ill.u.s.trating for us most forcibly the significance of this truth. For the preservation of local self-government in England various causes may be a.s.signed; but of these there are two which may be cited as especially prominent. In the first place, owing to the peculiar circ.u.mstances of the Teutonic settlement of Britain, the civilization of England previous to the Norman Conquest was but little affected by Roman ideas or inst.i.tutions. In the second place the thrusting down of the old thegnhood by the Norman Conquest (to which I have already alluded) checked the growth of a _n.o.blesse_ or _adel_ of the continental type,--a n.o.bility 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 _n.o.blesse_. It was primarily a n.o.bility of office rather than of rank or privilege. The peers were those men who retained 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 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 establishment of a House of Commons, their best chance for a political career lay in representing the interests of the people in the lower house. Hence between the upper and lower strata of English society 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 the continent a sovereign like Charles the Bold could use his n.o.bility to extinguish the liberties of the merchant towns of Flanders, nothing of the sort was ever possible in England. Throughout the Middle Ages, in every contest between 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 government and local liberties have been preserved to the English race.

In France the course of events has brought about very different results.

I shall defer to my next lecture the consideration of the vicissitudes of local self-government under the Roman Empire, 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 overcame 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 local self-government. While the Teutons in Britain, moreover, enslaved their slightly romanized subjects and gave little heed to their language, religion, or customs; the Teutons in Gaul, on the other hand, quickly adopted the language and religion 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 ma.s.s of old Aryan liberties to be dealt with as in the early history of England. Nor was there any powerful middle cla.s.s distributed through the country to defend such liberties as existed. Beneath the turbulent throng of Teutonic n.o.bles, among whom the king was only the most exalted and not always the strongest, there lay the Gallo-Roman population which had so long been accustomed to be ruled without representation by a distant government exercising its authority through innumerable prefects. Such Teutonic rank and file as there was became absorbed into this population; and except in sundry chartered towns there was nothing like a social stratum interposed between the n.o.bles and the common people.

The slow conversion of the feudal monarchy of the early Capetians into the absolute despotism of Louis XIV. was accomplished by the king gradually _conquering_ his va.s.sals one after another, and adding their domains to his own. As one va.s.sal territory after another was added to the royal domain, the king sent prefects, responsible only to himself, to administer its local affairs, sedulously crus.h.i.+ng out, so far as possible, the last vestiges of self-government. The n.o.bles, 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 convulsions of modern times. 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 ill.u.s.trated than in the contrasted fortunes of France and England as _colonizing_ nations. When we consider the declared 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 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 history. In my lectures of last year (at University College) I showed that, in the struggle for the possession of North 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 XIV. were here carried out without let or hindrance. It would be incredible, were it not attested by such abundant evidence, that the affairs of any people could be subjected to such minute 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. No one was allowed to enter or leave the colony without permission, not from the colonists but from the king. No 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 century of irritation and skirmis.h.i.+ng 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 the French power in America was instant and irretrievable annihilation. The town-meeting pitted against the bureaucracy was like a t.i.tan overthrowing a cripple.

The historic lesson owes its value to the fact that this ruin of the French scheme of colonial empire was due to no accidental circ.u.mstances, but was involved in the very nature of the French political system.

Obviously it is impossible for a people to plant beyond sea a colony 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 following 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 history.

II.