Russia an adoption of the Anglo-Saxon polity, more or less modified. Such has been the case with France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal. In all these lands, except France, which has a President, a Sovereign stands at the head of the state, in whose name executive acts are done, who is irresponsible and irremovable. The power lies with the ministers of the Sovereign, nominally appointed by him, but really owing their positions in a greater or less degree to the voice of the majority of the representatives of the people. The representatives, therefore, through these, their agents, possess executive as well as legislative power. This is the general scheme, the details of which vary widely. The supremacy of the legislature is most complete in France; least so in the German Empire, and in Prussia, where the power of the Emperor and King is great and not declining.1

A still farther extension of Anglo-Saxon freedom is perhaps possible. The two hundred and fifty millions of India, it is believed, have a capacity for self-government. Every village has its headman and a ruling committee. Sir Henry Maine, in his study of the village communities of India, presents interesting points of correspondence between them and those of other Aryan peoples. In them exists a germ of local selfgovernment, if not of representative institutions, which might be developed far. East Indians often possess high administrative talent. Mysore and Baroda, two of the largest provinces, within a few years have been given over to native rule. So it might be in

1 Bryce: American Commonwealth, I, p. 271, etc.

twenty different states. Why not a gradual substitution of native for English officers everywhere? it is asked. "A native administration, stimulated by English example, and still supervised by Englishmen, is not an unworthy idea. . . . A confederacy of many states and provinces, each developing peacefully after its own fashion, and united by a common bond to the English name, is our dream for the twentieth century." The humane wish is entertained that Englishmen, while protecting and guiding, may yet for the most part surrender the natives of India to themselves, in the hope that, building upon the local self-government which has never become extinct, a government of the people may some day come out not remotely resembling that of their masters.2

It can be administered only by Anglo-Saxon

men.

1

Anglo-Saxon freedom, however, can only be ordered and administered with thorough success by AngloSaxon men. For these the impulse has come down in the blood, to struggle for it, to cherish it, to live under it. To other races it is something foreign; and as a strange tongue rarely becomes so free and flowing upon our lips as the mother-speech, so as regards this ancient freedom, there is rarely a thorough and easy adaptation of it to races that have worn chains. It is destined for the dominion of the world; and this supremacy it is to gain, not as adopted by peoples to

1 Cotton and Payne: English Colonization and Dependence, English Citizen Series, p. 87. See, also, the "Westminster Review," January, 1889, article, "Federation vs. War," for a hopeful view of India.

2 See, upon this point, Dilke: Problems of Greater Britain, pp. 415, 425, 433, 437.

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?

cell of an

Anglo-Saxon

In our human bodies, if the cellular tissue is healthy, the physician is sure all will ultimately go well. Bones may be broken, sinews Condition of sprained, a blast of malaria may have the primordial caused an ague, or improper food dyspep- polity, the sia. 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.