- - did not join the United States. - Voyages of Cook. - Dis- - - - - - Permanence of the Federal Constitution.— Distrust of leg- islatures as indicated by the State constitutions. — Condi- tion of the primordial cell of an Anglo-Saxon polity, the popular moot. — Examination of rural America. - Local self-government in New England. - Influences which im- pair the character of the town-meeting. - Picture of it thirty years since. - Tributes to its value. Settlement of the West. - Ordinance of 1787.-Local self-govern- ment in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois. - The Township-County system of the Northwest. The County system of the South. – Virginia continues to be typical of the South.- The Township-County system the perfect type. — Exam- ination of urban America. - Growth and multiplication of cities. Their government the most conspicuous fail- ure of the United States. Eagerness to remedy the abuses. Predictions of its wide dominance. Views of J. R. Green, F. B. Zincke, Gladstone. The blood of the English-speak- ing race still pure, though enriched by foreign admix- ture. Views of E. A. Freeman, Matthew Arnold, R. A. Proctor, J. Bryce, Sir Edwin Arnold. — Identity of Eng- lish-speaking men as illustrated at the Colonial Exhibition of 1886. The stock never stronger or better than now. The troubles that beset it. - Dangers from intemperance, licentiousness, neglect of public education. -The French question in Canada; fear of the Chinese in Australia; Home Rule in England; in America the negro question, excessive The celebration of April 30th, 1889. The people's love of Anglo-Saxon freedom. — Testimony of Andrew Carnegie; of J. Toulmin Smith. - The American and the German.. Value in politics of the instinct of the plain people. View of J. Bryce, of Lecky, of Addison, of Motley, of - - The idea of an Anglo-Saxon brotherhood. - Views of J. R. - - world of Anglo-Saxon leadership. — Possible perils from - 343 "It is a matter of the first consequence that the relation to one another of the two branches of the English-speaking race should be more fully understood and realized." JAMES BRYCE. "The new building has been raised upon the old groundwork; the institutions of one age have always been modelled and formed from those of the preceding, and the lineal descent has never been interrupted or disturbed." SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE: English Commonwealth, I, 6. ANGLO-SAXON FREEDOM. CHAPTER I. THE PRIMITIVE SAXONS. 100 B.C.-449 A.D. ON the 30th of April, 1789, Washington, as the first President of the United States, took a solemn oath to maintain the Federal Constitution. The Declaration of Independence had been made fourteen years before; the Revolutionary War had been fought through; the Constitution painfully formulated, and after the most anxious fears, ratified. The first elections had been held in due form. The ship of state had been built and launched. One last anxious moment remained, when, for the first time, steam was turned into the new machinery. Would the contrivance work that had been set in order with such pains? As Washington took the oath, the pulsations began of the mighty engine whose accomplishment through the hundred years need not here be rehearsed. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, went into operation, a thing at that time unknown elsewhere among civilized nations. 1 |