the row of selectmen, with their brown, solid farmer faces, stood the Moderator, a vigorous man in the forties, six straight feet in height, colonel of the county regiment of militia, of a term's experience in the General Court, thus conversant with parliamentary law, a quick and energetic presiding officer.1 "It was indeed an arena. The south village was growing faster than the 'Street,' and there were rumors of efforts to be made to move the town-hall from its old place, which aroused great wrath; and both south village and Street' took it hard that part of the men of the districts to the north had favored a proposition to be set off to an adjoining town. The weak side of human nature came out as well as the strong in the numerous jealousies and bickerings. Following the carefully arranged programme or warrant, from which there could be no departure, because ample warning must be given of every measure proposed, item after item was considered, a change here in the course of the highway to the shire town; how much should be raised by taxes; the apportionment of money among the school districts; what bounty the town would pay its quota of troops for the war; a new wing for the poor-house; whether there should be a bridge at the west ford. Now and then came a touch of humor, as when the young husbands, married within the year, were elected field-drivers, officers taking the place of the ancient hog-reeves. Once the Moderator for the time being displeased the meeting by his ruling as regards certain points of order. 'Mr. Moderator,' cried out an ancient citizen with a 1 Colonel Horatio Hawks. twang in his voice like that of a well-played jew'sharp, ‘if it's in awrder, I'd jest like to inquire the price of cawn at Cheapside.' It was an effective reductio ad absurdum. A rustic Cicero, in a town not far off, whom for some reason the physicians of the village had displeased, once filled up a lull in the proceedings with, 'Mr. Moderator, I move that a dwelling be erected in the centre of the graveyard in which the doctors of the town be required to reside, that they may have always under their eyes the fruits of their labors.' "The talkers were sometimes fluent, sometimes stumbling and awkward. The richest man in the town, at the same time the town-treasurer, was usually a silent looker-on. His son, however, president of the county agricultural society, an enterprising farmer, whose team was the handsomest, whose oxen the fattest, whose crops the heaviest, was in speech forceful and eloquent, with an energetic word to say on every question. But he was scarcely more prominent in the discussions than the poor broom-corn raisers, whose tax was only a few dollars. There was the intrigue of certain free-thinkers to oust the ministers from the school-committee, the manoeuvring of the factions to get hold of the German colony, a body of immigrants lately imported into the factory village to the north. These sat in a solid mass to one side while the proceedings went on in an unknown tongue, without previous training for such work, voting this way or that, according to the direction of two or three leaders. "Watching it all, one could see how perfect a democracy it was. Things were often done far enough from whom it is something alien, but as upheld by the English-speaking race, so many million strong, its separate nationalities planted at so many points of vantage the world over, no more one in speech than one in blood and institutions. CHAPTER XVII. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE AMERICAN POLITY. 1789-1890. WHILE in the empire of England, Anglo-Saxon freedom has thus been adapting itself in throes almost revolutionary to the conditions of the nineteenth century, how has it fared in America? The thirteen States of 1789 have become in one hundred years forty-four; in population, area, resources of every kind, the Union has multiplied to a wonderful degree. As to constitutional changes, what have we to note? The great federal instrument stands substantially unchanged. The few amendments, famous though some of them are, wrought out at such of the Federal Cost of blood and treasure, call for no Permanence Constitution. notice in the present discussion. The clauses of the Constitution have been regarded with a veneration ever deepening, until it has become almost superstitious; to think of meddling with its provisions is, in the general view, almost an impiety. As regards the separate commonwealths, while each one of the forty-four has its peculiarities,1 the general resemblance is close. A tendency legislatures. to greater elaborateness in the written con Distrust of 1 See Henry Hitchcock: American State Constitutions, Putnams, 1887. stitutions is to be noted, as new States have been added one by one, proceeding so far that in the more recent instruments a provision for minute details exists in strong contrast with the older documents. This circumstance is due to a growing distrust, in the States, of the legislatures; delegates in so many cases prove inefficient, corrupt, or in some way false to their trust, that the people think fit more and more to tie their hands. Undoubtedly this deepening dissatisfaction with legislatures, Congress itself as well as those of lower rank, is a circumstance full of ill omen. If the representative body is a failure, then is Anglo-Saxon freedom a failure, and the sooner we recur to the system of Strafford or Richard II, the better. The ideas of those historic figures are by no means yet obsolete among English-speaking men.1 Is Anglo-Saxon freedom no longer well adapted to English-speaking men? What can be said about the condition of the primordial cell of our body-politic? Condition of the primordial cell of an Anglo-Saxon polity, the In our human bodies, if the cellular tissue is healthy, the physician is sure all will ultimately go well. Bones may be broken, sinews sprained, a blast of malaria may have caused an ague, or improper food dyspepsia. Various kinds of deep-seated trouble popular moot. may exist, acute and even chronic; but if the primordial cell everywhere is sound, the patient will survive. The proper primordial cell of an AngloSaxon body-politic is local self-government by a consensus of individual freemen; in other words, the 1 See Traill Life of Strafford, 1889, p. 204, etc., and notice of the same in London "Saturday Review," November 9, 1889. |