AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS
VIEWED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY
Three Lectures
DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN IN MAY 1880
BY JOHN FISKE
_Voici un fait entièrement nouveau dans le monde, et dont l'imagination
elle-même ne saurait saisir la portée._
TOCQUEVILLE
TO
EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS
NOBLEST OF MEN AND DEAREST OF FRIENDS
WHOSE UNSELFISH AND UNTIRING WORK IN EDUCATING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN
THE PRINCIPLES OF SOUND PHILOSOPHY DESERVES THE GRATITUDE OF ALL MEN
I dedicate this Book
PREFACE.
In the spring of 1879 I gave at the Old South Meeting-house in Boston a
course of lectures on the discovery and colonization of America, and
presently, through the kindness of my friend Professor Huxley, the
course was repeated at University College in London. The lectures there
were attended by very large audiences, and awakened such an interest in
American history that I was invited to return to England in the
following year and treat of some of the philosophical aspects of my
subject in a course of lectures at the Royal Institution.
In the three lectures which were written in response to this invitation,
and which are now published in this little volume, I have endeavoured to
illustrate some of the fundamental ideas of American politics by setting
forth their relations to the general history of mankind. It is
impossible thoroughly to grasp the meaning of any group of facts, in any
department of study, until we have duly compared them with allied groups
of facts; and the political history of the American people can be
rightly understood only when it is studied in connection with that
general process of political evolution which has been going on from the
earliest times, and of which it is itself one of the most important and
remarkable phases. The government of the United States is not the result
of special creation, but of evolution. As the town-meetings of New
England are lineally descended from the village assemblies of the early
Aryans; as our huge federal union was long ago foreshadowed in the
little leagues of Greek cities and Swiss cantons; so the great political
problem which we are (thus far successfully) solving is the very same
problem upon which all civilized peoples have been working ever since
civilization began. How to insure peaceful concerted action throughout
the Whole, without infringing upon local and individual freedom in the
Parts,--this has ever been the chief aim of civilization, viewed on its
political side; and we rate the failure or success of nations
politically according to their failure or success in attaining this
supreme end. When thus considered in the light of the comparative
method, our American history acquires added dignity and interest, and a
broad and rational basis is secured for the detailed treatment of
political questions.
When viewed in this light, moreover, not only does American history
become especially interesting to Englishmen, but English history is
clothed with fresh interest for Americans. Mr. Freeman has done well in
insisting upon the fact that the history of the English people does not
begin with the Norman Conquest. In the deepest and widest sense, our
American history does not begin with the Declaration of Independence, or
even with the settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth; but it descends in
unbroken continuity from the days when stout Arminius in the forests of
northern Germany successfully defied the might of imperial Rome. In a
more restricted sense, the statesmanship of Washington and Lincoln
appears in the noblest light when regarded as the fruition of the
various work of De Montfort and Cromwell and Chatham. The good fight
begun at Lewes and continued at Naseby and Quebec was fitly crowned at
Yorktown and at Appomattox. When we duly realize this, and further come
to see how the two great branches of the English race have the common
mission of establishing throughout the larger part of the earth a higher
civilization and more permanent political order than any that has gone
before, we shall the better understand the true significance of the
history which English-speaking men have so magnificently wrought out
upon American soil.
In dealing concisely with a subject so vast, only brief hints and
suggestions can be expected; and I have not thought it worth while, for
the present at least, to change or amplify the manner of treatment. The
lectures are printed exactly as they were delivered at the Royal
Institution, more than four years ago. On one point of detail some
change will very likely by and by be called for. In the lecture on the
Town-meeting I have adopted the views of Sir Henry Maine as to the
common holding of the arable land in the ancient German mark, and as to
the primitive character of the periodical redistribution of land in the
Russian village community. It now seems highly probable that these views
will have to undergo serious modification in consequence of the valuable
evidence lately brought forward by my friend Mr. Denman Ross, in his
learned and masterly treatise on "The Early History of Landholding among
the Germans;" but as I am not yet quite clear as to how far this
modification will go, and as it can in nowise affect the general drift
of my argument, I have made no change in my incidental remarks on this
difficult and disputed question.
In describing some of the characteristic features of country life in New
England, I had especially in mind the beautiful mountain village in
which this preface is written, and in which for nearly a quarter of a
century I have felt myself more at home than in any other spot in
the world.
In writing these lectures, designed as they were for a special occasion,
no attempt was made to meet the ordinary requirements of popular
audiences; yet they have been received in many places with unlooked-for
favour. The lecture on "Manifest Destiny" was three times repeated in
London, and once in Edinburgh; seven times in Boston; four times in New
York; twice in Brooklyn, N.Y., Plainfield, N.J., and Madison, Wis.; once
in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati,
Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Milwaukee; in Appleton and Waukesha, Wis.;
Portland, Lewiston, and Brunswick, Me.; Lowell, Concord, Newburyport,
Peabody, Stoneham, Maiden, Newton Highlands, and Martha's Vineyard,
Mass.; Middletown and Stamford, Conn.; Newburg and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.;
Orange, N.J.; and at Cornell University and Haverford College. In
several of these places the course was given.
PETERSHAM, _September 13, 1884_.
CONTENTS
I.
_THE TOWN-MEETING._
Differences in outward aspect between a village in England and a village
in Massachusetts. Life in a typical New England mountain village. Tenure
of land, domestic service, absence of poverty and crime, universality of
labour and of culture, freedom of thought, complete democracy. This
state of things is to some extent passing away. Remarkable
characteristics of the Puritan settlers of New England, and extent to
which their characters and aims have influenced American history. Town
governments in New England. Different meanings of the word "city" in
England and America. Importance of local self-government in the
political life of the United States. Origin of the town-meeting. Mr.
Freeman on the cantonal assemblies of Switzerland. The old Teutonic
"mark," or dwelling-place of a clan. Political union originally based,
not on territorial contiguity, but on blood-relationship. Divisions of
the mark. Origin of the village Common. The _mark-mote_. Village
communities in Russia and Hindustan. Difference between the despotism of
Russia and that of France under the Old Régime. Elements of sound
political life fostered by the Russian village. Traces of the mark in
England. Feudalization of Europe, and partial metamorphosis of the mark
or township into the manor. Parallel transformation of the township, in
some of its features, into the parish. The court leet and the
vestry-meeting. The New England town-meeting a revival of the ancient
mark-mote.
Vicissitudes of local self-government in the various portions of the
Aryan world illustrated in the contrasted cases of France and England.
Significant contrast between the aristocracy of England and that of the
Continent. Difference between the Teutonic conquests of Gaul and of
Britain. Growth of centralization in France. Why the English have always
been more successful than the French in founding colonies. Struggle
between France and England for the possession of North America, and
prodigious significance of the victory of England.
II.
_THE FEDERAL UNION_.
Wonderful greatness of ancient Athens. Causes of the political failure
of Greek civilization. Early stages of political aggregation,--the
_hundred_, the [Greek: _phratria_], the _curia_; the _shire_, the
_deme_, and the _pagus_. Aggregation of clans into tribes. Differences
in the mode of aggregation in Greece and Rome on the one hand, and in
Teutonic countries on the other. The Ancient City. Origin of cities in
Hindustan, Germany, England, and the United States. Religious character
of the ancient city. Burghership not granted to strangers. Consequences
of the political difference between the Graeco-Roman city and the
Teutonic shire. The _folk-mote_, or primary assembly, and the
_witenagemote_, or assembly of notables. Origin of representative
government in the Teutonic shire. Representation unknown to the Greeks
and Romans. The ancient city as a school for political training.
Intensity of the jealousies and rivalries between adjacent
self-governing groups of men. Smallness of simple social aggregates and
universality of warfare in primitive times. For the formation of larger
and more complex social aggregates, only two methods are
practicable,--_conquest_ or _federation_. Greek attempts at employing
the higher method, that of federation. The Athenian hegemony and its
overthrow. The Achaian and Aetolian leagues. In a low stage of political
development the Roman method of _conquest with incorporation_ was the
only one practicable. Peculiarities of the Roman conquest of Italy.
Causes of the universal dominion of Rome. Advantages and disadvantages
of this dominion:--on the one hand the _pax romana_, and the breaking
down of primitive local superstitions and prejudices; on the other hand
the partial extinction of local self-government. Despotism inevitable in
the absence of representation. Causes of the political failure of the
Roman system. Partial reversion of Europe, between the fifth and
eleventh centuries, towards a more primitive type of social structure.
Power of Rome still wielded through the Church and the imperial
jurisprudence. Preservation of local self-government in England, and at
the two ends of the Rhine. The Dutch and Swiss federations. The lesson
to be learned from Switzerland. Federation on a great scale could only
be attempted successfully by men of English political training, when
working without let or hindrance in a vast country not preoccupied by an
old civilization. Without local self-government a great Federal Union is
impossible. Illustrations from American history. Difficulty of the
problem, and failure of the early attempts at federation in New
England. Effects of the war for independence. The "Articles of
Confederation" and the "Constitution." Pacific implications of American
federalism.
III.
"_MANIFEST DESTINY._"
The Americans boast of the bigness of their country. How to "bound" the
United States. "Manifest Destiny" of the "Anglo-Saxon Race." The term
"Anglo-Saxon" slovenly and misleading. Statements relating to the
"English Race" have a common interest for Americans and for Englishmen.
Work of the English race in the world. The prime feature of civilization
is the diminution of warfare, which becomes possible only through the
formation of great political aggregates in which the parts retain their
local and individual freedom. In the earlier stages of civilization, the
possibility of peace can be guaranteed only through war, but the
preponderant military strength is gradually concentrated in the hands of
the most pacific communities, and by the continuance of this process the
permanent peace of the world will ultimately be secured. Illustrations
from the early struggles of European civilization with outer barbarism,
and with aggressive civilizations of lower type. Greece and Persia.
Keltic and Teutonic enemies of Rome. The defensible frontier of European
civilization carried northward and eastward to the Rhine by Caesar; to
the Oder by Charles the Great; to the Vistula by the Teutonic Knights;
to the Volga and the Oxus by the Russians. Danger in the Dark Ages from
Huns and Mongols on the one hand, from Mussulmans on the other. Immense
increase of the area and physical strength of European civilization,
which can never again be in danger from outer barbarism. Effect of all
this secular turmoil upon the political institutions of Europe. It
hindered the formation of closely coherent nations, and was at the same
time an obstacle to the preservation of popular liberties. Tendency
towards the _Asiaticization_ of European life. Opposing influences of
the Church, and of the Germanic tribal organizations. Military type of
society on the Continent. Old Aryan self-government happily preserved in
England. Strategic position of England favourable to the early
elimination of warfare from her soil. Hence the exceptionally normal and
plastic political development of the English race. Significant
coincidence of the discovery of America with the beginnings of the
Protestant revolt against the asiaticizing tendency. Significance of the
struggle between Spain, France, and England for the possession of an
enormous area of virgin soil which should insure to the conqueror an
unprecedented opportunity for future development. The race which gained
control of North America must become the dominant race of the world, and
its political ideas must prevail in the struggle for life. Moral
significance of the rapid increase of the English race in America.
Fallacy of the notion that centralized governments are needed for very
large nations. It is only through federalism, combined with local
self-government, that the stability of so huge an aggregate as the
United States can be permanently maintained. What the American
government really fought for in the late Civil War. Magnitude of the
results achieved. Unprecedented military strength shown by this most
pacific and industrial of peoples. Improbability of any future attempt
to break up the Federal Union. Stupendous future of the English
race,--in Africa, in Australia, and in the islands of the Pacific
Ocean. Future of the English language. Probable further adoption of
federalism. Probable effects upon Europe of industrial competition with
the United States: impossibility of keeping up the present military
armaments. The States of Europe will be forced, by pressure of
circumstances, into some kind of federal union. A similar process will
go on until the whole of mankind shall constitute a single political
body, and warfare shall disappear forever from the face of the earth.
AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS.
I.
_THE TOWN-MEETING._
The traveller from the Old World, who has a few weeks at his disposal
for a visit to the United States, usually passes straight from one to
another of our principal cities, such as Boston, New York, Washington,
or Chicago, stopping for a day or two perhaps at Niagara Falls,--or,
perhaps, after traversing a distance like that which separates England
from Mesopotamia, reaches the vast table-lands of the Far West and
inspects their interesting fauna of antelopes and buffaloes, red Indians
and Mormons. In a journey of this sort one gets a very superficial view
of the peculiarities, physical and social, which characterize the
different portions of our country; and in this there is nothing to
complain of, since the knowledge gained in a vacation-journey cannot
well be expected to be thorough or profound. The traveller, however,
who should visit the United States in a more leisurely way, with the
purpose of increasing his knowledge of history and politics, would find
it well to proceed somewhat differently. He would find himself richly
repaid for a sojourn in some insignificant place the very name of which
is unknown beyond sea,--just as Mr. Mackenzie Wallace--whose book on
Russia is a model of what such books should be--got so much invaluable
experience from his months of voluntary exile at Ivánofka in the
province of Novgorod. Out of the innumerable places which one might
visit in America, there are none which would better reward such careful
observation, or which are more full of interest for the comparative
historian, than the rural towns and mountain villages of New England;
that part of English America which is oldest in civilization (though not
in actual date of settlement), and which, while most completely English
in blood and in traditions, is at the same time most completely American
in so far as it has most distinctly illustrated and most successfully
represented those political ideas which have given to American history
its chief significance in the general work of civilization.
The United States are not unfrequently spoken of as a "new country," in
terms which would be appropriate if applied to Australia or New Zealand,
and which are not inappropriate as applied to the vast region west of
the Mississippi River, where the white man had hardly set foot before
the beginning of the present century. New England, however, has a
history which carries us back to the times of James I.; and while its
cities are full of such bustling modern life as one sees in Liverpool or
Manchester or Glasgow, its rural towns show us much that is
old-fashioned in aspect,--much that one can approach in an antiquarian
spirit. We are there introduced to a phase of social life which is
highly interesting on its own account and which has played an important
part in the world, yet which, if not actually passing away, is at least
becoming so rapidly modified as to afford a theme for grave reflections
to those who have learned how to appreciate its value. As any
far-reaching change in the condition of landed property in England, due
to agricultural causes, might seriously affect the position of one of
the noblest and most useful aristocracies that has ever existed; so, on
the other hand, as we consider the possible action of similar causes
upon the _personnel_ and upon the occupations of rural New England, we
are unwillingly forced to contemplate the possibility of a
deterioration in the character of the most perfect democracy the world
has ever seen.
In the outward aspect of a village in Massachusetts or Connecticut, the
feature which would be most likely first to impress itself upon the mind
of a visitor from England is the manner in which the village is laid out
and built. Neither in England nor anywhere else in western Europe have I
ever met with a village of the New England type. In English villages one
finds small houses closely crowded together, sometimes in blocks of ten
or a dozen, and inhabited by people belonging to the lower orders of
society; while the fine houses of gentlemen stand quite apart in the
country, perhaps out of sight of one another, and surrounded by very
extensive grounds. The origin of the village, in a mere aggregation of
tenants of the lord of the manor, is thus vividly suggested. In France
one is still more impressed, I think, with this closely packed structure
of the village. In the New England village, on the other hand, the finer
and the poorer houses stand side by side along the road. There are wide
straight streets overarched with spreading elms and maples, and on
either side stand the houses, with little green lawns in front, called
in rustic parlance "door-yards." The finer houses may stand a thousand
feet apart from their neighbours on either side, while between the
poorer ones there may be intervals of from twenty to one hundred feet,
but they are never found crowded together in blocks. Built in this
capacious fashion, a village of a thousand inhabitants may have a main
street more than a mile in length, with half a dozen crossing streets
losing themselves gradually in long stretches of country road. The
finest houses are not ducal palaces, but may be compared with the
ordinary country-houses of gentlemen in England. The poorest houses are
never hovels, such as one sees in the Scotch Highlands. The picturesque
and cosy cottage at Shottery, where Shakespeare used to do his courting,
will serve very well as a sample of the humblest sort of old-fashioned
New England farm-house. But most of the dwellings in the village come
between these extremes. They are plain neat wooden houses, in
capaciousness more like villas than cottages. A New England village
street, laid out in this way, is usually very picturesque and beautiful,
and it is highly characteristic. In comparing it with things in Europe,
where one rarely finds anything at all like it, one must go to something
very different from a village. As you stand in the Court of Heroes at
Versailles and look down the broad and noble avenue that leads to
Paris, the effect of the vista is much like that of a New England
village street. As American villages grow into cities, the increase in
the value of land usually tends to crowd the houses together into blocks
as in a European city. But in some of our western cities founded and
settled by people from New England, this spacious fashion of building
has been retained for streets occupied by dwelling-houses. In
Cleveland--a city on the southern shore of Lake Erie, with a population
about equal to that of Edinburgh--there is a street some five or six
miles in length and five hundred feet in width, bordered on each side
with a double row of arching trees, and with handsome stone houses, of
sufficient variety and freedom in architectural design, standing at
intervals of from one to two hundred feet along the entire length of the
street. The effect, it is needless to add, is very noble indeed. The
vistas remind one of the nave and aisles of a huge cathedral.
Now this generous way in which a New England village is built is very
closely associated with the historical origin of the village and with
the peculiar kind of political and social life by which it is
characterized. First of all, it implies abundance of land. As a rule the
head of each family owns the house in which he lives and the ground on
which it is built. The relation of landlord and tenant, though not
unknown, is not commonly met with. No sort of social distinction or
political privilege is associated with the ownership of land; and the
legal differences between real and personal property, especially as
regards ease of transfer, have been reduced to the smallest minimum that
practical convenience will allow. Each householder, therefore, though an
absolute proprietor, cannot be called a miniature lord of the manor,
because there exists no permanent dependent class such as is implied in
the use of such a phrase. Each larger proprietor attends in person to
the cultivation of his own land, assisted perhaps by his own sons or by
neighbours working for hire in the leisure left over from the care of
their own smaller estates. So in the interior of the house there is
usually no domestic service that is not performed by the mother of the
family and the daughters. Yet in spite of this universality of manual
labour, the people are as far as possible from presenting the appearance
of peasants. Poor or shabbily-dressed people are rarely seen, and there
is no one in the village whom it would be proper to address in a
patronizing tone, or who would not consider it a gross insult to be
offered a shilling. As with poverty, so with dram-drinking and with
crime; all alike are conspicuous by their absence. In a village of one
thousand inhabitants there will be a poor-house where five or six
decrepit old people are supported at the common charge; and there will
be one tavern where it is not easy to find anything stronger to drink
than light beer or cider. The danger from thieves is so slight that it
is not always thought necessary to fasten the outer doors of the house
at night. The universality of literary culture is as remarkable as the
freedom with which all persons engage in manual labour. The village of a
thousand inhabitants will be very likely to have a public circulating
library, in which you may find Professor Huxley's "Lay Sermons" or Sir
Henry Maine's "Ancient Law": it will surely have a high-school and half
a dozen schools for small children. A person unable to read and write is
as great a rarity as an albino or a person with six fingers. The farmer
who threshes his own corn and cuts his own firewood has very likely a
piano in his family sitting-room, with the _Atlantic Monthly_ on the
table and Milton and Tennyson, Gibbon and Macaulay on his shelves, while
his daughter, who has baked bread in the morning, is perhaps ready to
paint on china in the afternoon. In former times theological questions
largely occupied the attention of the people; and there is probably no
part of the world where the Bible has been more attentively read, or
where the mysteries of Christian doctrine have to so great an extent
been made the subject of earnest discussion in every household. Hence we
find in the New England of to-day a deep religious sense combined with
singular flexibility of mind and freedom of thought.
A state of society so completely democratic as that here described has
not often been found in connection with a very high and complex
civilization. In contemplating these old mountain villages of New
England, one descries slow modifications in the structure of society
which threaten somewhat to lessen its dignity. The immense
productiveness of the soil in our western states, combined with
cheapness of transportation, tends to affect seriously the agricultural
interests of New England as well as those of our mother-country. There
is a visible tendency for farms to pass into the hands of proprietors of
an inferior type to that of the former owners,--men who are content with
a lower standard of comfort and culture; while the sons of the old
farmers go off to the universities to prepare for a professional career,
and the daughters marry merchants or lawyers in the cities. The
mountain-streams of New England, too, afford so much water-power as to
bring in ugly factories to disfigure the beautiful ravines, and to
introduce into the community a class of people very different from the
landholding descendants of the Puritans. When once a factory is
established near a village, one no longer feels free to sleep with
doors unbolted.
It will be long, however, I trust, before the simple, earnest and
independent type of character that has been nurtured on the Blue Hills
of Massachusetts and the White Hills of New Hampshire shall cease to
operate like a powerful leaven upon the whole of American society. Much
has been said and sung in praise of the spirit of chivalry, which, after
all, as a great historian reminds us, "implies the arbitrary choice of
one or two virtues, to be practised in such an exaggerated degree as to
become vices, while the ordinary laws of right and wrong are
forgotten." [1] Quite enough has been said, too, in discredit of
Puritanism,--its narrowness of aim, its ascetic proclivities, its quaint
affectations of Hebraism. Yet these things were but the symptoms of the
intensity of its reverence for that grand spirit of Hebraism, of which
Mr. Matthew Arnold speaks, to which we owe the Bible and Christianity.
No loftier ideal has ever been conceived than that of the Puritan who
would fain have made of the world a City of God. If we could sum up all
that England owes to Puritanism, the story would be a great one indeed.
As regards the United States, we may safely say that what is noblest in
our history to-day, and of happiest augury for our social and political
future, is the impress left upon the character of our people by the
heroic men who came to New England early in the seventeenth century.
The settlement of New England by the Puritans occupies a peculiar
position in the annals of colonization, and without understanding this
we cannot properly appreciate the character of the purely democratic
society which I have sought to describe. As a general rule colonies have
been founded, either by governments or by private enterprise, for
political or commercial reasons. The aim has been--on the part of
governments--to annoy some rival power, or to get rid of criminals, or
to open some new avenue of trade, or--on the part of the people--to
escape from straitened circumstances at home, or to find a refuge from
religious persecution. In the settlement of New England none of these
motives were operative except the last, and that only to a slight
extent. The Puritans who fled from Nottinghamshire to Holland in 1608,
and twelve years afterwards crossed the ocean in the _Mayflower_, may be
said to have been driven from England by persecution. But this was not
the case with the Puritans who between 1630 and 1650 went from
Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and from Dorset and Devonshire, and
founded the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. These men left
their homes at a time when Puritanism was waxing powerful and could not
be assailed with impunity. They belonged to the upper and middle classes
of the society of that day, outside of the peerage. Mr. Freeman has
pointed out the importance of the change by which, after the Norman
Conquest, the Old-English nobility or _thegnhood_ was pushed down into
"a secondary place in the political and social scale." Of the
far-reaching effects of this change upon the whole subsequent history of
the English race I shall hereafter have occasion to speak. The proximate
effect was that "the ancient lords of the soil, thus thrust down into
the second rank, formed that great body of freeholders, the stout gentry
and yeomanry of England, who were for so many ages the strength of the
land." [2] It was from this ancient thegnhood that the Puritan settlers
of New England were mainly descended. It is no unusual thing for a
Massachusetts family to trace its pedigree to a lord of the manor in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century. The leaders of the New England
emigration were country gentlemen of good fortune, similar in position
to such men as Hampden and Cromwell; a large proportion of them had
taken degrees at Cambridge. The rank and file were mostly intelligent
and prosperous yeomen. The lowest ranks of society were not represented
in the emigration; and all idle, shiftless, or disorderly people were
rigorously refused admission into the new communities, the early history
of which was therefore singularly free from anything like riot or
mutiny. To an extent unparalleled, therefore, in the annals of
colonization, the settlers of New England were a body of _picked men_.
Their Puritanism was the natural outcome of their free-thinking,
combined with an earnestness of character which could constrain them to
any sacrifices needful for realizing their high ideal of life. They gave
up pleasant homes in England, and they left them with no feeling of
rancour towards their native land, in order that, by dint of whatever
hardship, they might establish in the American wilderness what should
approve itself to their judgment as a god-fearing community. It matters
little that their conceptions were in some respects narrow. In the
unflinching adherence to duty which prompted their enterprise, and in
the sober intelligence with which it was carried out, we have, as I said
before, the key to what is best in the history of the American people.
Out of such a colonization as that here described nothing but a
democratic society could very well come, save perhaps in case of a
scarcity of arable land. Between the country gentleman and the yeoman
who has become a landed proprietor, the difference is not great enough
to allow the establishment of permanent distinctions, social or
political. Immediately on their arrival in New England, the settlers
proceeded to form for themselves a government as purely democratic as
any that has ever been seen in the world. Instead of scattering about
over the country, the requirements of education and of public worship,
as well as of defence against Indian attacks, obliged them to form small
village communities. As these villages multiplied, the surface of the
country came to be laid out in small districts (usually from six to ten
miles in length and breadth) called _townships_. Each township contained
its village together with the woodlands surrounding it. In later days
two or more villages have often grown up within the limits of the same
township, and the road from one village to another is sometimes bordered
with homesteads and cultivated fields throughout nearly its whole
length. In the neighbourhood of Boston villages and small towns crowd
closely together for twenty miles in every direction; and all these will
no doubt by and by grow together into a vast and complicated city, in
somewhat the same way that London has grown.
From the outset the government of the township was vested in the
TOWN-MEETING,--an institution which in its present form is said to be
peculiar to New England, but which, as we shall see, has close analogies
with local self-governing bodies in other ages and countries. Once in
each year--usually in the month of March--a meeting is held, at which
every adult male residing within the limits of the township is expected
to be present, and is at liberty to address the meeting or to vote upon
any question that may come up.
In the first years of the colonies it seems to have been attempted to
hold town-meetings every month, and to discuss all the affairs of the
community in these assemblies; but this was soon found to be a cumbrous
way of transacting public business, and as early as 1635 we find
_selectmen_ chosen to administer the affairs of the township during the
intervals between the assemblies. As the system has perfected itself, at
each annual town-meeting there are chosen not less than three or more
than nine selectmen, according to the size of the township. Besides
these, there are chosen a town-clerk, a town-treasurer, a
school-committee, assessors of taxes, overseers of the poor, constables,
surveyors of highways, fence-viewers, and other officers. In very small
townships the selectmen themselves may act as assessors of taxes or
overseers of the poor. The selectmen may appoint police-officers if such
are required; they may act as a Board of Health; in addition to sundry
specific duties too numerous to mention here, they have the general
superintendence of all public business save such as is expressly
assigned to the other officers; and whenever circumstances may seem to
require it they are authorized to call a town-meeting. The selectmen are
thus the principal town-magistrates; and through the annual election
their responsibility to the town is maintained at the maximum. Yet in
many New England towns re-election of the same persons year after year
has very commonly prevailed. I know of an instance where the office of
town-clerk was filled by three members of one family during one hundred
and fourteen consecutive years.
Besides choosing executive officers, the town-meeting has the power of
enacting by-laws, of making appropriations of money for town-purposes,
and of providing for miscellaneous emergencies by what might be termed
special legislation. Besides the annual meeting held in the spring for
transacting all this local business, the selectmen are required to call
a meeting in the autumn of each year for the election of state and
county officers, each second year for the election of representatives to
the federal Congress, and each fourth year for the election of the
President of the United States.
It only remains to add that, as an assembly of the whole people becomes
impracticable in a large community, so when the population of a township
has grown to ten or twelve thousand, the town-meeting is discontinued,
the town is incorporated as a city, and its affairs are managed by a
mayor, a board of aldermen, and a common council, according to the
system adopted in London in the reign of Edward I. In America,
therefore, the distinction between cities and towns has nothing to do
with the presence or absence of a cathedral, but refers solely to
differences in the communal or municipal government. In the city the
common council, as a representative body, replaces (in a certain sense)
the town-meeting; a representative government is substituted for a pure
democracy. But the city officers, like the selectmen of towns, are
elected annually; and in no case (I believe) has municipal government
fallen into the hands of a self-perpetuating body, as it has done in so
many instances in England owing to the unwise policy pursued by the
Tudors and Stuarts in their grants of charters.
It is only in New England that the township system is to be found in its
completeness. In several southern and western states the administrative
unit is the county, and local affairs are managed by county
commissioners elected by the people. Elsewhere we find a mixture of the
county and township systems. In some of the western states settled by
New England people, town-meetings are held, though their powers are
somewhat less extensive than in New England. In the settlement of
Virginia it was attempted to copy directly the parishes and vestries,
boroughs and guilds of England. But in the southern states generally the
great size of the plantations and the wide dispersion of the population
hindered the growth of towns, so that it was impossible to have an
administrative unit smaller than the county. As Tocqueville said fifty
years ago, "the farther south we go the less active does the business of
the township or parish become; the population exercises a less immediate
influence on affairs; the power of the elected magistrate is augmented
and that of the election diminished, while the public spirit of the
local communities is less quickly awakened and less influential." This
is almost equally true to-day; yet with all these differences in local
organization, there is no part of our country in which the spirit of
local self-government can be called weak or uncertain. I have described
the Town-meeting as it exists in the states where it first grew up and
has since chiefly flourished. But something very like the "town-meeting
principle" lies at the bottom of all the political life of the United
States. To maintain vitality in the centre without sacrificing it in the
parts; to preserve tranquillity in the mutual relations of forty
powerful states, while keeping the people everywhere as far as possible
in direct contact with the government; such is the political problem
which the American Union exists for the purpose of solving; and of this
great truth every American citizen is supposed to have some glimmering,
however crude.
It has been said that the town-governments of New England were
established without any conscious reference to precedent; but, however
this may be, they are certainly not without precedents and analogies, to
enumerate which will carry us very far back in the history of the Aryan
world. At the beginning of his essay on the "Growth of the English
Constitution," Mr. Freeman gives an eloquent account of the May
assemblies of Uri and Appenzell, when the whole people elect their
magistrates for the year and vote upon amendments to the old laws or
upon the adoption of new ones. Such a sight Mr. Freeman seems to think
can be seen nowhere but in Switzerland, and he reckons it among the
highest privileges of his life to have looked upon it. But I am unable
to see in what respect the town-meeting in Massachusetts differs from
the _Landesgemeinde_ or cantonal assembly in Switzerland, save that it
is held in a town-hall and not in the open air, that it is conducted
with somewhat less of pageantry, and that the freemen who attend do not
carry arms even by way of ceremony. In the Swiss assembly, as Mr.
Freeman truly observes, we see exemplified the most democratic phase of
the old Teutonic constitution as described in the "Germania" of
Tacitus, "the earliest picture which history can give us of the
political and social being of our own forefathers." The same remark, in
precisely the same terms, would be true of the town-meetings of New
England. Political institutions, on the White Mountains and on the Alps,
not only closely resemble each other, but are connected by strict bonds
of descent from a common original.
The most primitive self-governing body of which we have any knowledge is
the village-community of the ancient Teutons, of which such strict
counterparts are found in other parts of the Aryan world as to make it
apparent that in its essential features it must be an inheritance from
prehistoric Aryan antiquity. In its Teutonic form the primitive
village-community (or rather, the spot inhabited by it) is known as the
_Mark_,--that is, a place defined by a boundary-line. One characteristic
of the mark-community is that all its free members are in theory
supposed to be related to each other through descent from a common
progenitor; and in this respect the mark-community agrees with the
_gens_, [Greek: _ginos_], or _clan_. The earliest form of political
union in the world is one which rests, not upon territorial contiguity,
but upon I blood-relationship, either real or assumed through the legal
fiction of adoption. In the lowest savagery blood-relationship is the
only admissible or conceivable ground for sustained common action among
groups of men. Among peoples which wander about, supporting themselves
either by hunting, or at a somewhat more advanced stage of development
by the rearing of flocks and herds, a group of men, thus permanently
associated through ties of blood-relationship, is what we call a _clan_.
When by the development of agricultural pursuits the nomadic mode of
life is brought to an end, when the clan remains stationary upon some
piece of territory surrounded by a strip of forest-land, or other
boundaries natural or artificial, then the clan becomes a
mark-community. The profound linguistic researches of Pictet, Fick, and
others have made it probable that at the time when the Old-Aryan
language was broken up into the dialects from which the existing
languages of Europe are descended, the Aryan tribes were passing from a
purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incipient agricultural stage,
somewhat like that which characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in
the seventeenth century. The comparative study of institutions leads to
results in harmony with this view, showing us the mark-community of our
Teutonic ancestors with the clear traces of its origin in the more
primitive clan; though, with Mr. Kemble, I do not doubt that by the time
of Tacitus the German tribes had long since reached the
agricultural stage.
Territorially the old Teutonic mark consisted of three divisions. There
was the _village mark_, where the people lived in houses crowded closely
together, no doubt for defensive purposes; there was the _arable mark_,
divided into as many lots as there were householders; and there was the
_common mark_, or border-strip of untilled land, wherein all the
inhabitants of the village had common rights of pasturage and of cutting
firewood. All this land originally was the property not of any one
family or individual, but of the community. The study of the mark
carries us back to a time when there may have been private property in
weapons, utensils, or trinkets, but not in real estate.[3] Of the three
kinds of land the common mark, save where curtailed or usurped by lords
in the days of feudalism, has generally remained public property to this
day. The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of
towns and cities in England and the United States most probably
originated from the coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby
the border-land used in common by all was brought into the centre of the
new aggregate. In towns of modern date this origin of the common is of
course forgotten, and in accordance with the general law by which the
useful thing after discharging its functions survives for purposes of
ornament, it is introduced as a pleasure-ground. In old towns of New
England, however, the little park where boys play ball or children and
nurses "take the air" was once the common pasture of the town. Even
Boston Common did not entirely cease to be a grazing-field until 1830.
It was in the village-mark, or assemblage of homesteads, that private
property in real estate naturally began. In the Russian villages to-day
the homesteads are private property, while the cultivated land is owned
in common. This was the case with the _arable mark_ of our ancestors.
The arable mark belonged to the community, and was temporarily divided
into as many fields as there were households, though the division was
probably not into equal parts: more likely, as in Russia to-day, the
number of labourers in each household was taken into the account; and at
irregular intervals, as fluctuations in population seemed to require it,
a thorough-going redivision was effected. In carrying out such
divisions and redivisions, as well as in all matters relating to
village, ploughed field, or pasture, the mark-community was a law unto
itself. Though individual freedom was by no means considerable, the
legal existence of the individual being almost entirely merged in that
of his clan, the mark-community was a completely self-governing body.
The assembly of the mark-men, or members of the community, allotted land
for tillage, determined the law or declared the custom as to methods of
tillage, fixed the dates for sowing and reaping, voted upon the
admission of new families into the village, and in general transacted
what was then regarded as the public business of the community. In all
essential respects this village assembly or _mark-mote_ would seem to
have resembled the town-meetings of New England.