perpetual maintenance of that peculiar state of things which the federal
union had created,--a state of things in which, throughout the whole
vast territory over which the Union holds sway, questions between
states, like questions between individuals, must be settled by legal
argument and judicial decisions and not by wager of battle. Far better
to demonstrate this point once for all, at whatever cost, than to be
burdened hereafter, like the states of Europe, with frontier fortresses
and standing armies and all the barbaric apparatus of mutual suspicion!
For so great an end did this most pacific people engage in an obstinate
war, and never did any war so thoroughly illustrate how military power
may be wielded, when necessary, by a people that has passed entirely
from the military into the industrial stage of civilization. The events
falsified all the predictions that were drawn from the contemplation of
societies less advanced politically. It was thought that so peaceful a
people could not raise a great army on demand; yet within a twelvemonth
the government had raised five hundred thousand men by voluntary
enlistment. It was thought that a territory involving military
operations at points as far apart as Paris and Moscow could never be
thoroughly conquered; yet in April 1865 the federal armies might have
inarched from end to end of the Gulf States without meeting any force to
oppose them. It was thought that the maintenance of a great army would
beget a military temper in the Americans and lead to manifestations of
Bonapartism,--domestic usurpation and foreign aggression; yet the moment
the work was done the great army vanished, and a force of twenty-five
thousand men was found sufficient for the military needs of the whole
country. It was thought that eleven states which had struggled so hard
to escape from the federal tie could not be re-admitted to voluntary
co-operation in the general government, but must henceforth be held as
conquered territory,--a most dangerous experiment for any free people to
try. Yet within a dozen years we find the old federal relations resumed
in all their completeness, and the disunion party powerless and
discredited in the very states where once it had wrought such mischief.
Nay more, we even see a curiously disputed presidential election, in
which the votes of the southern states were given almost with unanimity
to one of the candidates, decided quietly by a court of arbitration; and
we see a universal acquiescence in the decision, even in spite of a
general belief that an extraordinary combination of legal subtleties
resulted in adjudging the presidency to the candidate who was not
really elected.
Such has been the result of the first great attempt to break up the
federal union in America. It is not probable that another attempt can
ever be made with anything like an equal chance of success. Here were
eleven states, geographically contiguous, governed by groups of men who
for half a century had pursued a well-defined policy in common, united
among themselves and marked off from most of the other states by a
difference far more deeply rooted in the groundwork of society than any
mere economic difference,--the difference between slave-labour and
free-labour. These eleven states, moreover, held such an economic
relationship with England that they counted upon compelling the naval
power of England to be used in their behalf. And finally it had not yet
been demonstrated that the maintenance of the federal union was
something for which the great mass of the people would cheerfully fight.
Never could the experiment of secession be tried, apparently, under
fairer auspices; yet how tremendous the defeat! It was a defeat that
wrought conviction,--the conviction that no matter how grave the
political questions that may arise hereafter, they must be settled in
accordance with the legal methods the Constitution has provided, and
that no state can be allowed to break the peace. It is the thoroughness
of this conviction that has so greatly facilitated the reinstatement of
the revolted states in their old federal relations; and the good sense
and good faith with which the southern people, in spite of the chagrin
of defeat, have accepted the situation and acted upon it, is something
unprecedented in history, and calls for the warmest sympathy and
admiration on the part of their brethren of the north. The federal
principle in America has passed through this fearful ordeal and come out
stronger than ever; and we trust it will not again be put to so severe a
test. But with this principle unimpaired, there is no reason why any
further increase of territory or of population should overtask the
resources of our government.
In the United States of America a century hence we shall therefore
doubtless have a political aggregation immeasurably surpassing in power
and in dimensions any empire that has as yet existed. But we must now
consider for a moment the probable future career of the English race in
other parts of the world. The colonization of North America by
Englishmen had its direct effects upon the eastern as well as upon the
western side of the Atlantic. The immense growth of the commercial and
naval strength of England between the time of Cromwell and the time of
the elder Pitt was intimately connected with the colonization of North
America and the establishment of plantations in the West Indies. These
circumstances reacted powerfully upon the material development of
England, multiplying manifold the dimensions of her foreign trade,
increasing proportionately her commercial marine, and giving her in the
eighteenth century the dominion over the seas. Endowed with this
maritime supremacy, she has with an unerring instinct proceeded to seize
upon the keys of empire in all parts of the world,--Gibraltar, Malta,
the isthmus of Suez, Aden, Ceylon, the coasts of Australia, island after
island in the Pacific,--every station, in short, that commands the
pathways of maritime commerce, or guards the approaches to the barbarous
countries which she is beginning to regard as in some way her natural
heritage. Any well-filled album of postage-stamps is an eloquent
commentary on this maritime supremacy of England. It is enough to turn
one's head to look over her colonial blue-books. The natural outcome of
all this overflowing vitality it is not difficult to foresee. No one can
carefully watch what is going on in Africa to-day without recognizing it
as the same sort of thing which was going on in North America in the
seventeenth century; and it cannot fail to bring forth similar results
in course of time. Here is a vast country, rich in beautiful scenery and
in resources of timber and minerals, with a salubrious climate and
fertile soil, with great navigable rivers and inland lakes, which will
not much longer be left in control of tawny lions and long-eared
elephants and negro fetich-worshippers. Already five flourishing English
states have been established in the south, besides the settlements on
the Gold Coast and those at Aden commanding the Red Sea. English
explorers work their way, with infinite hardship, through its
untravelled wilds, and track the courses of the Congo and the Nile as
their forefathers tracked the Potomac and the Hudson. The work of La
Salle and Smith is finding its counterpart in the labours of Baker and
Livingstone. Who can doubt that within two or three centuries the
African continent will be occupied by a mighty nation of English
descent, and covered with populous cities and flourishing farms, with
railroads and telegraphs and other devices of civilization as yet
undreamed of?
If we look next to Australia, we find a country of more than two-thirds
the area of the United States, with a temperate climate and immense
resources, agricultural and mineral,--a country sparsely peopled by a
race of irredeemable savages hardly above the level of brutes. Here
England within the present century has planted six greatly thriving
states, concerning which I have not time to say much, but one fact will
serve as a specimen. When in America we wish to illustrate in one word
the wonderful growth of our so-called north-western states, we refer to
Chicago,--a city of half-a-million inhabitants standing on a spot which
fifty years ago was an uninhabited marsh. In Australia the city of
Melbourne was founded in 1837, the year when the present queen of
England began to reign, and the state of which it is the capital was
hence called Victoria. This city, now[16] just forty-three years old,
has a population half as great as that of Chicago, has a public library
of 200,000 volumes, and has a university with at least one professor of
world-wide renown. When we see, by the way, within a period of five
years and at such remote points upon the earth's surface, such erudite
and ponderous works in the English language issuing from the press as
those of Professor Hearn of Melbourne, of Bishop Colenso of Natal, and
of Mr. Hubert Bancroft of San Francisco,--even such a little commonplace
fact as this is fraught with wonderful significance when we think of all
that it implies. Then there is New Zealand, with its climate of
perpetual spring, where the English race is now multiplying faster than
anywhere else in the world unless it be in Texas and Minnesota. And
there are in the Pacific Ocean many rich and fertile spots where we
shall very soon see the same things going on.
It is not necessary to dwell upon such considerations as these. It is
enough to point to the general conclusion, that the work which the
English race began when it colonized North America is destined to go on
until every land on the earth's surface that is not already the seat of
an old civilization shall become English in its language, in its
political habits and traditions, and to a predominant extent in the
blood of its people. The day is at hand when, four-fifths of the human
race will trace its pedigree to English forefathers, as four-fifths of
the white people in the United States trace their pedigree to-day. The
race thus spread over both hemispheres, and from the rising to the
setting sun, will not fail to keep that sovereignty of the sea and that
commercial supremacy which it began to acquire when England first
stretched its arm across the Atlantic to the shores of Virginia and
Massachusetts. The language spoken by these great communities will not
be sundered into dialects like the language of the ancient Romans, but
perpetual intercommunication and the universal habit of reading and
writing will preserve its integrity; and the world's business will be
transacted by English-speaking people to so great an extent, that
whatever language any man may have learned in his infancy he will find
it necessary sooner or later to learn to express his thoughts in
English. And in this way it is by no means improbable that, as Grimm the
German and Candolle the Frenchman long since foretold, the language of
Shakespeare may ultimately become the language of mankind.
In view of these considerations as to the stupendous future of the
English race, does it not seem very probable that in due course of time
Europe--which has learned some valuable lessons from America
already--will find it worth while to adopt the lesson of federalism?
Probably the European states, in order to preserve their relative weight
in the general polity of the world, will find it necessary to do so. In
that most critical period of American history between the winning of
independence and the framing of the Constitution, one of the strongest
of the motives which led the confederated states to sacrifice part of
their sovereignty by entering into a federal union was their keen sense
of their weakness when taken severally. In physical strength such a
state as Massachusetts at that time amounted to little more than Hamburg
or Bremen; but the thirteen states taken together made a nation of
respectable power. Even the wonderful progress we have made in a century
has not essentially changed this relation of things. Our greatest state,
New York, taken singly, is about the equivalent of Belgium; our weakest
state, Nevada, would scarcely be a match for tha county of Dorset; yet
the United States, taken together, are probably at this moment the
strongest nation in the world.
Now a century hence, with a population of six hundred millions in the
United States, and a hundred and fifty millions in Australia and New
Zealand, to say nothing of the increase of power in other parts of the
English-speaking world, the relative weights will be very different from
what they were in 1788. The population of Europe will not increase in
anything like the same proportion, and a very considerable part of the
increase will be transferred by emigration to the English-speaking world
outside of Europe. By the end of the twentieth century such nations as
France and Germany can only claim such a relative position in the
political world as Holland and Switzerland now occupy. Their greatness
in thought and scholarship, in industrial and aesthetic art, will
doubtless continue unabated. But their political weights will severally
have come to be insignificant; and as we now look back, with historic
curiosity, to the days when Holland was navally and commercially the
rival of England, so people will then need to be reminded that there was
actually once a time when little France was the most powerful nation on
the earth. It will then become as desirable for the states of Europe to
enter into a federal union as it was for the states of North America a
century ago.
It is only by thus adopting the lesson of federalism that Europe can do
away with the chances of useless warfare which remain so long as its
different states own no allegiance to any common authority. War, as we
have seen, is with barbarous races both a necessity and a favourite
occupation. As long as civilization comes into contact with barbarism,
it remains a too frequent necessity. But as between civilized and
Christian nations it is a wretched absurdity. One sympathizes keenly
with wars such as that which Russia has lately concluded, for setting
free a kindred race endowed with capacity for progress, and for humbling
the worthless barbarian who during four centuries has wrought such
incalculable damage to the European world. But a sanguinary struggle for
the Rhine frontier, between two civilized Christian nations who have
each enough work to do in ithe world without engaging in such a strife
as this, will, I am sure, be by and by condemned by the general opinion
of mankind. Such questions will have to be settled by discussion in some
sort of federal council or parliament, if Europe would keep pace with
America in the advance towards universal law and order. All will admit
that such a state of things is a great desideratum: let us see if it is
really quite so utopian as it may seem at the first glance. No doubt the
lord who dwelt in Haddon Hall in the fifteenth century would have
thought it very absurd if you had told him that within four hundred
years it would not be necessary for country gentlemen to live in great
stone dungeons with little cross-barred windows and loopholes from which
to shoot at people going by. Yet to-day a country gentleman in some
parts of Massachusetts may sleep securely without locking his
front-door. We have not yet done away with robbery and murder, but we
have at least made private warfare illegal; we have arrayed public
opinion against it to such an extent that the police-court usually makes
short shrift for the misguided man who tries to wreak vengeance on his
enemy. Is it too much to hope that by and by we may similarly put public
warfare under the ban? I think not. Already in America, as wre have
seen, it has become customary to deal with questions between states just
as we would deal with questions between individuals. This we have seen
to be the real purport of American federalism. To have established such
a system ovrer one great continent is to have made a very good beginning
towards establishing it over the world. To establish such a system in
Europe will no doubt be difficult, for here we have to deal with an
immense complication of prejudices, intensified by linguistic and
ethnological differences. Nevertheless the pacific pressure exerted upon
Europe by America is becoming so great that it will doubtless before
long overcome all these obstacles. I refer to the industrial competition
between the old and the new worlds, which has become so conspicuous
within the last ten years. Agriculturally Minnesota, Nebraska, and
Kansas are already formidable competitors with England, France, and
Germany; but this is but the beginning. It is but the first spray from
the tremendous wave of economic competition that is gathering in the
Mississippi valley. By and by, when our shameful tariff--falsely called
"protective"--shall have been done away with, and our manufacturers
shall produce superior articles at less cost of raw material, we shall
begin to compete with European countries in all the markets of the
world; and the competition in manufactures will become as keen as it is
now beginning to be in agriculture. This time will not be long in
coming, for our tariff-system has already begun to be discussed, and in
the light of our present knowledge discussion means its doom. Born of
crass ignorance and self-defeating greed, it cannot bear the light. When
this curse to American labour--scarcely less blighting than the; curse
of negro slavery--shall have been once removed, the economic pressure
exerted upon Europe by the United States will soon become very great
indeed. It will not be long before this economic pressure will make it
simply impossible for the states of Europe to keep up such military
armaments as they are now maintaining. The disparity between the United
States, with a standing army of only twenty-five thousand men withdrawn
from industrial pursuits, and the states of Europe, with their standing
armies amounting to four millions of men, is something that cannot
possibly be kept up. The economic competition will become so keen that
European armies will have to be disbanded, the swords will have to be
turned into ploughshares, and _thus_ the victory of the industrial over
the military type of civilization will at last become complete. But to
disband the great armies of Europe will necessarily involve the forcing
of the great states of Europe into some sort of federal relation, in
which Congresses--already held on rare occasions--will become more
frequent, in which the principles of international law will acquire a
more definite sanction, and in which the combined physical power of all
the states will constitute (as it now does in America) a permanent
threat against any state that dares to wish for selfish reasons to break
the peace. In some such way as this, I believe, the industrial
development of the English race outside of Europe will by and by enforce
federalism upon Europe. As regards the serious difficulties that grow
out of prejudices attendant upon differences in language, race, and
creed, a most valuable lesson is furnished us by the history of
Switzerland. I am inclined to think that the greatest contribution which
Switzerland has made to the general progress of civilization has been to
show us how such obstacles can be surmounted, even on a small scale. To
surmount them on a great scale will soon become the political problem of
Europe; and it is America which has set the example and indicated
the method.
Thus we may foresee in general outline how, through the gradual
concentration of the preponderance of physical power into the hands of
the most pacific communities, the wretched business of warfare must
finally become obsolete all over the globe. The element of distance is
now fast becoming eliminated from political problems, and the history of
human progress politically will continue in the future to be what it has
been in the past,--the history of the successive union of groups of men
into larger and more complex aggregates. As this process goes on, it may
after many more ages of political experience become apparent that there
is really no reason, in the nature of things, why the whole of mankind
should not constitute politically one huge federation,--each little
group managing its local affairs in entire independence, but relegating
all questions of international interest to the decision of one central
tribunal supported by the public opinion of the entire human race. I
believe that the time will come when such a state of things will exist
upon the earth, when it will be possible (with our friends of the Paris
dinner-party) to speak of the UNITED STATES as stretching from pole to
pole,--or, with Tennyson, to celebrate the "parliament of man and the
federation of the world." Indeed, only when such a state of things has
begun to be realized, can Civilization, as sharply demarcated from
Barbarism, be said to have fairly begun. Only then can the world be said
to have become truly Christian. Many ages of toil and doubt and
perplexity will no doubt pass by before such a desideratum is reached.
Meanwhile it is pleasant to feel that the dispassionate contemplation of
great masses of historical facts goes far towards confirming our faith
in this ultimate triumph of good over evil. Our survey began with
pictures of horrid slaughter and desolation: it ends with the picture of
a world covered with cheerful homesteads, blessed with a sabbath of
perpetual peace.
[Footnote 1: Freeman, "Norman Conquest," v. 482.]
[Footnote 2: Freeman, "Comparative Politics," 264.]
[Footnote 3: This is disputed, however. See Ross, "Early History of
Landholding among the Germans."]
[Footnote 4: Stubbs, "Constitutional History," i. 84.]
[Footnote 5: Kemble, "Saxons in England," i. 59.]
[Footnote 6: Maine, "Village Communities," Lond., 1871, p. 132.]
[Footnote 7: Stubbs, "Constitutional History," i. 85.]
[Footnote 8: Freeman, "Comparative Politics," 118.]
[Footnote 9: Geffroy, "Rome et les Barbares," 209.]
[Footnote 10: Maine, "Village Communities," 118.]
[Footnote 11: Stubbs, "Constitutional History," i. 625.]
[Footnote 12: Stubbs, "Select Charters," 401.]
[Footnote 13: "La Cité Antique," 441.]
[Footnote 14: Arnold, "Roman Provincial Administration," 237.]
[Footnote 15: Stubbs, "Select Charters," 401.]
[Footnote 16: In 1880.]
INDEX.
Abderrahman
Achaian league
Aden
Adoption
Aetolian league
Africa, English colonies in
Albany Congress
Amphiktyonic Council
Angeln
Angles
Anglo-American
Anglo-Saxon
Appomattox
Arable mark
Ariovistus
Armada, the Invincible
Armies of Europe will be disbanded
Arminius
Arnold, M.
Asiaticization
Athens, grandeur of
incorporated demes of Attika,
old tribal divisions modified,
school of political training
maritime empire of
Attila
Australia
Austria
Baker, Sir S.
Bancroft, Hubert
Barons, war of the
Basileus
Batu
Belgium
Benefices
Bern
Bonaparte, N.
Bonapartism
Boroughs, special privileges of
Boston, growth of
its Common
Boundaries of United States
Burgundians
By-laws
Caesar, J.
California, social experiments in
Canada under Old Régime
Candolle, A. de,
Canton,
Carlyle on dollar-hunters,
Centralized government, weakness of,
Century,
Ceylon,
Châlons, battle of,
Charles I.,
Charles the Bold,
Charles Martel,
Charles the Great,
Chatham, Lord,
Chester,
Chicago,
Chinese,
Christianity,
Church, mediaeval,
Cities in England and America,
origin of,
City, the ancient,
Civilization, its primary phase,
long threatened by neighbouring barbarism,
Clan-system of political union,
Claudius, emperor,
Clement IV.,
Cleveland, city of.
Colenso, J.W.
Colonies, how founded,
Comitia,
Commendation,
Commons, House of,
Commons, origin of,
Communal farming in England,
Communal landholding,
Competition, industrial, between Europe and America,
Confederation, articles of,
Connecticut, men of, defy James II.,
Constitution of the United States,
Continentals and British,
Cromwell, O.,
Curia,
Delian confederacy,
Derne,
Departments of France,
Dependencies, danger of governing them despotically,
Didius Julianus,
Diocletian,
Domestic service in a New England village,
Dorset,
Dover, men of, throw papal bull into sea,
Duke,
Dutch republic,
Ealdorman,
Ecclesia,
Eden, Chuzzlewit's,
Electoral commission,
Emancipation of slaves,
England, maritime supremacy of
English colonization
language, future of
self-government, how preserved,
villages