and respectable were the exiles in the other colonies. There were, in fact, no better men or women in America, as regards intelligence, substantial good purpose, and piety. They had made the one great mistake of conceding a supremacy over themselves to distant arbitrary masters, which a population nurtured under the influence of the revived folkmoot ought by no means to have made; but with this exception, the exiles were not at all inferior in worth of every kind to those who drove them forth. The Tories were generally people of substance; their stake in the country was greater even than that of their opponents; their patriotism, no doubt, was to the full as fervent. There is much that is melancholy, of which the world knows but little, connected with their expulsion from the land they sincerely loved. The estates of the Tories were among the fairest; their stately mansions stood on the sightliest hill-brows; the richest and best tilled meadows were their farms; the long avenue, the broad lawn, the trim hedge about the garden, servants, plate, pictures, the varied circumstance, external and internal, of dignified and generous housekeeping, for the most part these things were at the homes of Tories. They loved beauty, dignity, and refinement. It seemed to belong to such forms of life to be generously loyal to King and Parliament, without questioning too narrowly as to rights and taxes. The rude contacts of the town-meetings were full of things to offend the taste of a gentleman. The Crown officials were courteous, well-born, congenial, having behind them the far-away nobles and the Sovereign, who rose in the imagination,

unknown and at a distance as they were, surrounded by a brilliant glamour. Was there not a certain meanness in haggling as to the tax which these polite placemen and their superiors might choose to exact, or inquiring narrowly as to their credentials when they chose to exercise authority? The graceful, the chivalrous, the poetic, the spirits over whom these feelings had power, were sure to be Tories. Democracy was something rough and coarse; independence, — what was it but a severing of those connections of which a colonist ought to be proudest! It was an easy thing to be led into taking sides against notions like these. Hence, when the country rose, many a high-bred, honorable gentleman turned the key in his door, drove down his line of trees with his refined dame and carefully guarded children at his side, turned his back on his handsome estate, and put himself under the shelter of the proud banner of St. George. It was a mere temporary refuge, he thought, and as he pronounced upon Sam Adams and the rabble a gentlemanly execration, he promised himself a speedy return, when discipline and loyalty should have put down the ship-yard men and the misled rustics.

Pathetic circumstances

triation.

"But the return was never to be. The day went against them; they crowded into ships with the gates of their country barred forever behind them. They found themselves penni- of their expaless upon shores often bleak and barren, always showing scant hospitality to outcasts who came empty-handed, and there they were forced to begin life anew. Having chosen their side, their lot was evitable. Nor are the victors to be harshly

judged. There was no unnecessary cruelty shown to the loyalists. The land they had left belonged to the new order of things, and, good men and women though they were, there was nothing for them, and justly so, but to bear their expatriation and poverty with such fortitude as they could find. Gray, Clarke, Erving, and Faneuil, Royall and Vassall, Fayerweather and Leonard and Sewall, families of honorable note, bound in with all that was best in the life of the Province, who now can think of their destiny without pity?"

of the Atlan

tic.

The war of the American Revolution, then, was a strife not of countries, but of parties, a strife carried Victory of the on both in England and in America,— popular party on both sides bloodless in the mother-land, bloody in the dependency, but, nevertheless, a strife carried on in each arena for the preservation of the same priceless treasure, Anglo-Saxon freedom, — and fought through with similar spirit. On one side of the Atlantic, victory came speedily. In America there were no traditions and institutions, rooted for centuries, to be upturned; and besides, there came most timely help from France. We are to see, however, how victory in America drew necessarily with it victory in England. It has long been delayed, but it has been steadily coming, until at the present moment, as regards popular freedom, the two countries stand nearly together, -England, perhaps, though preserving monarchical forms, and much social feudalism, really in advance. Popular freedom was probably saved to England by the success

of the American struggle; and, on the other hand, America has derived that popular freedom nowhere but from the mother-land, through the struggles of her Alfred, of her Langton and the Barons of 1215, of her Earl Simon, of her knights-of-the-shire, her Ironsides, her supporters of the Bill of Rights. What a noble community is this, common striving so heroic for a common cause of such supreme moment! How mean the nursing of petty prejudice between lands so linked; how powerful the motive to join hand with hand and heart with heart!

1 Lecky: XVIIIth Century, III, p. 289; see also Buckle, as before cited, p. 225.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

1783-1789.

WHEN the war of the American Revolution had been brought to a successful issue, and the Thirteen Colonies stood independent, as United

The written

unique feat

ure of the American polity.

Constitution a States, the momentous question at once was presented, What shall be the form of the new nation? The adoption of the Federal Constitution was the next step taken. The only unique feature of the American polity, as the new nation took shape, was the provision as regards each separate State and as regards the United States, for a carefully formulated instrument, to be drawn up by an assembly of representatives of the people distinct from the legislative assembly, an instrument to be interpreted by a Supreme Court especially empowered for that purpose, an instrument, by which the whole work of law-making shall be imperatively controlled. No such controlling instrument has guided the development of Great

In England, Parliament completely

Britain, or of any other land. De Tocqueunfettered. ville declared that in Great Britain the constitution can change without cessation, or rather it does not exist. The English law-makers are completely unfettered. English writers, such as Black