there have been periods of temporary submergence, adaptation to the needs of ever vaster multitudes and higher civilizations, manifold development and elaboration: one spirit, however, has survived through all, apparent in the deliberations of a modern Congress or Parliament, as also it was apparent in the ancient folk-moots, where the free ceorls chose their army leaders and regulated the life in their marks.

While works upon the constitutional history, both of England and America, abound, they for the most part appeal, both as to style and size, rather to the scholar and the statesman, than to the general reader and the youthful student. Moreover, in such works it has too seldom happened that the constitutional history of the English-speaking race has been regarded en solidarité: but in this way it is both proper and expedient to regard that history. England and America are mother and child; the polity of the latter in its origin is a mere outflow from that of the former, the two constitutional streams since the divergence flowing constantly parallel and mutually reacting. Our frequent complaint is that Englishmen fail to understand us; just so, we fail to understand them. Says the Westminster Review, for March, 1889: “England's sternest, coldest, most critical censors, I have found among descendants of the old settlers; surely they retain something of ancient Puritan bitterness. The source of estrangement I am inclined to trace largely to the fact that the average American reads no history but United States history, and he can hardly be said to study that." Certainly, to set right the "average American," and also the average Englishman, is a task worth essaying. There ought to be

room for a book succinct and simple in its terms, which should tell to busy men and to youth in the class-room, the story of Anglo-Saxon freedom; for as James Bryce has said: "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."

In the execution of such a task the difficulties are not small. How to preserve a proper historical perspective while viewing upon so reduced a scale such a multitude of events and figures? What guides to select in threading one's way through the long ages? There is no period through which one must not proceed with care, and the embarrassments are perhaps as great with respect to times close at hand as with respect to times remote. While this book was in preparation, the establishment of the County Councils has restored to the English shires their ancient local self-government; since it was ready for the printer six Commonwealths have been added to the American Union; as it awaits its publication, an Anglo-Saxon protectorate extends itself more and more widely over Africa, and the federation of Australia may become any month an accomplished fact. These are all events noteworthy in the history of Anglo-Saxon freedom, as are still others of which the newspapers weekly give report. How to catch them accurately and in due proportion? As to remote ages, the darkness due to the remoteness is further deepened by the controversies of scholars. The employment of representation has commonly been held to be characteristic of Anglo-Saxon societies in the most distant epochs; but this honor is now denied to them by authorities

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deserving of high respect, who find no good evidence of the existence of a representative system until after the Norman conquest. Mr. Frederic Seebohm, in his English Village Communities," fails to see that the Anglo-Saxon invaders brought with them any freedom at all, as they set up their tuns and scires in their new home: in the settlements that were established a lord ruled as master, with a society under him in a condition of villenage; the free village community was by no means the type, but from the first a marked feudalism in which the mass of men were serfs.

Still more sweepingly, Mr. H. C. Coote, in his "Romans of Britain," will have it that the AngloSaxons transmitted to us not only no freedom, but nothing else. They were simply a horde of invading savages, exercising for a time dominion over a people they had conquered, who much surpassed them in civilization, — a horde which was at length annihilated by the Danes, leaving no trace of itself or its influence; for, thinks Mr. Coote, all that we have called Anglo-Saxon, in blood, tongue, or institutions, ought to be ascribed to a different stock, and has received the name only through mistake.—While at the two extremes of the subject embarrassments thus abound, certain intermediate periods are scarcely more free. In the English colonization of America, for instance, the extent to which the new country followed the precedents of the old is not a matter upon which all are agreed. The "new historical school," of which E. A. Freeman may be regarded as the founder, and of which the most characteristic publications in America are the historical and politi

cal tracts of Johns Hopkins University, edited by Prof. Herbert B. Adams, is inclined to trace in minute detail in American societies the usages of the old world, — a course for which it has been sharply censured, sometimes by scholars of reputation.

Under these circumstances, if a time were ever likely to arrive when doubtful questions will be any less in doubt, it would be prudent to defer the execution of such a task as the present one until that time. What probability is there, however, that the mighty march of Anglo-Saxondom will in these ages, ever press less confusingly upon the contemporaneous chronicler ; or that as regards the past, the discord of authorities will ever be harmonized? The task is worth executing; the time as propitious as any that is likely to arise. The present writer, fortifying his judgment as he could, has written his book, following the lead of the scholars most accepted. The numerous footnotes will show, he trusts, that he has not been negligent in his reading. However open to question his conclusions may sometimes appear, they are not, at any rate, hap-hazard, but referable to respectable

sources.

The writer desires to express his obligation to a number of helpers. He is indebted to Mr. Goldwin Smith and to Mr. James Bryce for letters expressing sympathy with the main idea he has had at heart, — to illustrate, namely, the substantial identity of the great English-speaking nations, in stock, and in the spirit of their social and political institutions, as well as in tongue; and the expediency that these nations should, in John Bright's phrase, become one

people. The writer has received such a letter also from the venerable Sir George Grey of Auckland,at different times formerly, governor-general of New Zealand, of an Australian province, and of South Africa, and in those high positions so honorably identified with the rise of an English-speaking world in the South Pacific. Dr. W. G. Hammond, Dean of the St. Louis Law School, Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, late librarian of the Boston Public Library, and Prof. W. W. Folwell of the University of Minnesota, have given the writer the benefit of their criticisms upon several of his chapters, and helped him to important books which he could not otherwise have obtained. To Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., owners of the copyright of the "Life of Samuel Adams" and "Life of Young Sir Henry Vane," the writer is under obligation, for permission to quote from earlier work of his own bearing upon the present subject. Finally, it must be mentioned that this History of AngloSaxon Freedom has been written at the instance of Mrs. Mary Hemenway, of Boston, and is to be regarded as an outgrowth of the work undertaken by her to promote good citizenship and love of freedom, known as the Old South work.

ST. LOUIS, September 21st, 1890.

JAMES K. HOSMER.