The later theory has been aptly stated thus: "The long continuance of a people under any given political order engenders a habit and action, which ripens into a political instinct and becomes powerful in determining the form of institutions and the direction of political progress.1 In the early stages of political life, changes "out of whom, if there be only enough of them, theorists of the Social Contract school undertake to build up the state. This is an enterprise at which Aristotle would have stared and gasped."History of the Science of Politics, 9. "The influence of this contract theory on political thought lingers even to this day, though in a constantly diminishing degree. At present it may be considered as having generally given place to the view first advanced by Aristotle." Crane and Moses, Politics, 68. 1 "Intelligence," substantially says Professor Joseph Le Conte, "works by experience, and is wholly dependent on individual experience for the wisdom of its actions; while instinct, on the other hand, is wholly independent of individual experience. If we regard instinct in the light of intelligence, then it is not individual intelligence, but cosmic intelligence, or the laws of nature working through inherited brain structure to produce wise results. Intelligence belongs to the individual, and is therefore variable, that is, different in different individuals, and also improvable in the life of the individual by experience. Instinct belongs to the species, and is therefore the same in all individuals, and unimprovable with age and experience. . . . In a word, intelligent conduct is self-determined and becomes wise by individual experience. Instinctive conduct is predetermined in wisdom by brain structure. The former is free; the latter is, to a large extent, automatic." — Popular Science Monthly, October, 1875. "As to the origin of instinct, it can hardly be said that any theory has as yet gained universal assent, but no hypothesis appears more worthy of acceptance than that which regards it as habit grown to be hereditary. An act frequently performed in the consciousness of a specific purpose may continue to be performed, through the determinative force of struc ... are less frequent than in the later stages, and opportunity is thereby offered for the ideas of social organization peculiar to primitive times to impress themselves upon the mind, and in the course of centuries of political monotony to ripen into a firmly fixed instinct. Thus the political instincts of a race have their origin in a prehistoric age, in an age when generation after generation passes away, leaving no record of change in social forms, or of the acquisition of new ideas. And it is this political instinct that must be taken account of, if we would fully understand political progress; it is in its force and persistence that we discern the main cause of that tendency displayed in kindred nations to preserve in their governments the essential features of the primitive political institutions of the race to which they belong." 1 Whether such philosophy be sound or not, attention is being increasingly drawn at the present day to the ascertained fact of racial influence on political development, the essential and continuous potency of racial institutions in the life of nations. Historical writers have directed observation to the actual rise of modern governmental systems from ancient originals, and scientific writers have applied the theory of heredity to ture, after the consciousness of the purpose of the act has been lost. When this peculiarity of structure or the mental bias caused by the frequent and continued exercise of the mind in a given direction has become hereditary, the habit has grown into an instinct." Crane and Moses, Politics, 69. 1 Ibid. 70. politics, and have asserted the well-nigh automatic play of hereditary traits upon national career and destiny. Quite aside from possible extremes of speculation, few persons will nowadays question the reality of this racial force. In examining into the sources of the Constitution of the United States, it will be found necessary to bear in mind from the outset that the nation was founded by men, the great majority of whom were of the English branch of the Teutonic race.1 The colonists were, for 1 Mr. Douglas Campbell (Puritan in Holland, England, and America), in his effort to make out a Dutch origin for American institutions, has fallen into the mistake of underestimating English influence. One of his main contentions is that the American people are not of English race; and he bases this assumption upon the fact that there were resident along with the English in the colonies Welshmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Scotch-Irishmen, Dutch, Germans, Frenchmen and Swedes. But, for the purposes of the present inquiry, it is sufficient to remember: — 1. The above statement is strictly accurate: "The great majority" of the settlers were of "the English branch of the Teutonic race." Mr. Campbell admits that the English majority was overwhelming. 2. The Scotch, Welsh, Irish, and Scotch-Irish had lived under British institutions before journeying to America. They had passed through an English constitutional experience as really as had their English fellow-countrymen. 3. Those of other races resident in the colonies had personal contact for several generations with English government in its imperial and colonial forms. 4. All colonists alike were British subjects; and English administration dominated all, as completely as did the English language. 5. The Constitution of the United States as a legal document is traceable not to race influences in any vague sense, but to race the most part, of one blood. Their language and social usages were those of Great Britain. They took with them to America not merely memories of political institutions, but, to a considerable extent, the English law itself. And they continued for a century or more, despite changing conditions, in political union with England as members of one empire.1 influences as worked out in the form of laws. And those laws were English. In simple truth, the presence in America, during colonial days, of the representatives of other races than the English has left scarcely a trace in the national Constitution. This is so, notwithstanding the fact that these races have contributed in several ways to the formation of the national spirit of the Americans. Thus an acknowledgment is due to the Dutch themselves Teutonic - who did much to promote the love of freedom. And Mr. Campbell, in his second volume, shows that the influence of the Scotch-Irish was in the same direction. The free school, the use of a written ballot, certain features of the land laws and of the township system, which Mr. Campbell mentions, are doubtless traceable, in part at least, to Dutch sources; and though not included in the Constitution, have exercised an influence in moulding the American nation. It would be easy to exaggerate this influence, especially if English government in America, which forms the great fact of early American history, should be left out of the account. In opening for investigation a most interesting question—the question of Dutch influences - Mr. Campbell has seemingly erred on this side. His very able treatment of his theme renders this bias the more regrettable. 1 "The people were proud to call themselves Englishmen away from home,' and they were prompt to claim all the rights and liberties of English subjects."— Landon, Constitutional History and Government of the United States, 20. Referring to the persistence of the English traits in the race, even among Americans of our own day, Professor Hosmer says: "Can it be said that the stock is still funda That they possessed a common nationality in, and were thus subject to England is in itself an important fact; for a strong nation never fails to make an impress upon the minds of its citizens or subjects, and it edu - mentally English, however large may have been the inpouring into its veins of foreign blood? When among our kin beyond sea it was urged, not long since, that in the people of England the AngloSaxon had been superseded; that Celt, Frank, Scandinavian, Hollander, and Huguenot the multitude of invaders and immigrants through a thousand years - had reduced the primitive element to insignificance, it was well replied by Mr. Freeman:. ‘In a nation there commonly is a certain element which is more than an element, something which is its real kernel, its real essence; something which attracts and absorbs all other elements, so that other elements are not co-ordinate elements, but mere infusions into a whole which is already in being. . . . If, after adopting so many we remain Englishmen, none the less surely a new witness is brought to the strength of the English life within us, — a life which can thus do the work of the alchemist, and change every foreign element into its own English being.' [Four Oxford Lectures, 1887, p. 80.] A similar statement might be made as regards America. The stranger, indeed, has been with us from the beginning Frenchman and Spaniard preceded us; Celt, Swede, Dutchman, and German came with us in the earliest ships. The overflow of Europe . . has poured in upon us in an inundation; yet the English stock remains, - the element which is more than an element, the real kernel, the real essence; something that attracts and absorbs all other elements, so that other elements are not co-ordinate, but mere infusions into a whole which is already in being." Hosmer, Anglo-Saxon Freedom, 312, 313. : ... He gives evidence of this, and quotes the testimony of the late Professor Richard A. Proctor: "I have had better opportunities than most men of comparing the two nations; and I profess I find the difference between them even less than I should have expected from the difference in the conditions under which the two nations have sub |