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fairly self-controlled, than through a monarchy or the rule of a few. Now and then a King arises of the highest good sense and the utmost worth. Sometimes a small governing class will show, through a term of years, unselfishness and solicitous skill in public business. The beneficent autocrat is sure, however, to give way sooner or later to some tyrant -the well-meaning few to a grasping oligarchy. The masses of mankind can trust no one but themselves to afford to their welfare a proper oversight. No one will claim for democratic government that it is not beset by embarrassments and dangers. Its course is always through tumults; its frictions under the most favorable circumstances cause often painful jarring and obstruction. But when all is said against it that can be said, it remains true that, for Anglo-Saxon men, no other government is in the long run so safe and efficient.

View of John

There is, however, a more important consideration than even this in favor of government of the people, and here I cannot do better than follow Stuart Mill. the thought of John Stuart Mill. The best government is that which does most to improve the people, and that is the government in which the supreme controlling power in the last resort is vested in the entire aggregate of the community, -every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government by the personal discharge of some public function, local or general. The superiority of popular government over every other as to effect upon character is decided and indisputable. The practice

of the dicastery and ecclesia raised the intellectual standard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond anything of which there is any example, either ancient or modern. A benefit of the same kind is produced upon Englishmen and Americans, by their liability to be placed on juries and to serve in town, district, and parish offices. They are thus made very different beings in range of ideas and development of faculties from those who have done nothing in their lives but drive a quill or sell goods over a counter. Still more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded when private citizens take part in the public functions. They must weigh interests not their own, and be guided by another rule than their private partialities: they must regard the general good. Participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful: such participation should, however, be great as the general good will allow; nothing else can be ultimately desirable than the admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the state. Unless substantial mental cultivation in the mass of mankind is to be a mere vision, this is the road by which it must come. De Tocqueville has shown the close connection between the patriotism and intelligence of Americans and their democratic institutions. No such wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated minds has ever been seen elsewhere, or even conceived of as attainable. Nothing quickens and expands like political discussion; but political discussions fly over the heads of those who have no votes and are not endeavoring to acquire them. Their position in comparison with the electors is that of an audience in

a court of justice compared with the twelve men in the jury-box.1

Views of
J. Toulmin
Smith.

To these views of Mill may be added those of another energetic writer. Popular government affords the only true education. It is not schools and colleges that can ever give that education. They may be the means of imposing cramps and fetters on the mind; they may dull out half the faculties by giving undue exercise to others; they may drill into a lifeless routine of proprieties and conventionalisms; they may even impart what is called refinement and politeness; but they never are, and never can be, the means of training up to the great business of life. For that a greater and wider school is necessary,-the school of the active exercise of all the faculties in the earnest work of real life. But the great instrument for drawing forth the powers of mind and sharpening the wit in every useful way will be the free schools of manly discussion and intercommunication which popular institutions will keep always open and attended. Both as to thought and action, the faculties of man will have this as their best training. Men cannot discuss without first having paid some attention to the subject-matter of discussion. As long as everything is done for them, they have no occasion to think at all, and will soon become incapable of thinking. But the moment they are thrown on their own resources, the moment selfreliance and self-dependence are made necessary to their existence, they wake from their torpor, put forth their energies, and rouse their faculties. It becomes

1 Considerations respecting Representative Government, American ed., p. 62, etc,

necessary that they should act; and to act they should think.1

If, then, Anglo-Saxon freedom is a matter of such paramount importance, time will be well spent in tracing its course in history. It has been seen that a considerable similarity exists among the popular institutions of the primitive Aryan stocks, a similarity extending in some degree to savage races in general. No such development, however, has anywhere else taken place as that in the case of Anglo-Saxon freedom. The English-speaking race is the only race in which there has been an unbroken institutional growth from the forest beginnings. "No other society," says Macaulay, "has yet succeeded in uniting revolution with prescription, progress with stability, the energy of youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity."

2

Anglo-Saxon

Britain.

In the conquest of England there was a complete transfer to the island, of the continental order. Veritable war-keels of the times of Hengist and Horsa have been preserved in the peat- conquest of bogs of Sleswick, so that an accurate idea may be formed of the fleets in which was effected this memorable deportation. They were flat-bottomed, so that they might be easily beached, seventy feet in length, eight or nine in width, with sides of oak planks fastened by bark ropes and iron bolts. Besides the sails, the power of fifty oars forced the dragon figure-head through the sea. Along the bul

1 J. Toulmin Smith: Local Self-Government and Centralization,

London, J. Chapman, 1851, p. 50, etc.

2 History of England, Vol. I, p. 20, Harper's ed.

warks were ranged the war-boards, the round shields of the crew, of yellow limewood, with an iron boss in the centre. In the holds of the preserved ships have been found still lying the weapons and armor held ready for the landing, the short seax, at once dagger and knife; the sword, with its blade runeinscribed; the long spear of ash; the falcon or boarcrested helmet. In the effete Roman world upon

the border of which they had lived, scarcely touched by influences from it either good or bad, the basis of society was the peasant crushed by deepening fiscal tyranny into the slave; the basis of political life was the hardly less enslaved proprietor, disarmed, bound like a serf to the soil, powerless to withstand the greed of the government in which he himself had not the slightest part.1 The society and polity with which those rude barks, breasting far and near the bleak German Ocean, were freighted, was, on the other hand, that of freemen, brave ceorls, judging, fighting for themselves; farmers and herdsmen by land, by sea the boldest of sailors.

After the foray of Jute, Angle, and Saxon warriors, wife and child presently followed; just as distinctly in the transplantation passed ætheling,

Transference

of the continental civilization to the new home.

ceorl, læt, and slave, who presently set in order tun, hundred, and shire, each with

its appropriate moot.2 The movement has

1 J. R. Green: The Making of England, p. 148.

2 It must be noted here that there are scholars who find no evidence of such a transference of life and institutions from the Elbe and Weser plains to Britain, at the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Mr. H. C. Coote in his "Romans of Britain" (London, F. Norgate, 1878), argues at length, that during the Roman period the greater part of the island was occupied by the Belga, who had begun to settle here before the

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