of the body politic, the _administration_ is his limbs, and expands
from him with such improvements as new circumstances permit and such
modifications as they require, in the same manner as it had done from
the sovereign in the mother country. Not that each colony passes through
all the stages through which the latter pass; that depends on the date
at which the colony was given off. Massachusetts and Virginia alone
of the North American colonies, New South Wales and Tasmania alone of
the Australasian, described most of them; in the younger colonies the
earlier ones were dropped. Thus (to mention a single point) the office
of Colonial Secretary (who was originally the governor's secretary,
as the Secretary for Ireland, till the other day, was only the Lord
Lieutenant's secretary) differentiates into several ministries, as the
department of Secretary of State had differentiated in England. An
anomaly is worth noting. In the United States, where the whole people is
the fountain of power, the ministers are the servants of the President,
appointed and dismissed by him. In England, while they are still in
theory her Majesty's ministers, and the Prime Minister is nominally
selected by the sovereign, by a remarkable transformation they have
become the servants of the legislature--that is, of the people. The two
countries have exchanged institutions, as Hamlet and Laertes exchanged
rapiers. The explanation is historical. The United States parted from
the development of Britain at a time when the executive was, far more
than now, independent of the legislature and dependent on the sovereign.
The framers of the Constitution of the United States, looking at the
British Constitution from without, and ignoring the subtle checks and
balances that gave the lie to Montesquieu's too rigid trichotomy,
petrified a still developing system, and dug a gulf between the
executive and the legislature. But in England, with the growing weakness
of the crown and the growing strength of the legislature, the ministers
have gone over to the popular side. The younger British colonies were
founded at a time when this development was already far advanced, and
they have repeated the evolution. A curious consequence ensues. While
in a monarchical country and its colonies a manifestation of public
opinion can in a week bring the most powerful ministry to its knees, the
President and ministers of a popularly governed country pursue their
irresponsible course in apparent indifference to either pulpit or press.
A similar cleavage divides the _legislative_ structure. The governor of
crown colonies, like the sovereign, is at first the sole, and through
his ministers to the last the chief, legislator; the legislature is
created by concessions wrung from him, and its history is the record
of successive limitations of his authority. In charter colonies the
legislature is the creation of the people, and the laws are made by its
deputies. A single tolerably perfect example of each type is chosen.
The early history of New South Wales is one of the best preserved
specimens in the museum of political paleontology. During its earliest
years the governor was as absolute as the first Norman sovereigns.
William Rufus might ask: "You Taillebois, what have you to propose in
this arduous matter?... Potdevin, what is your opinion of the measure?"
And Philip, hunter or king, might as unceremoniously solicit the advice
of the chaplain or the commander of the forces, but they were under no
obligation to take it; and the earliest laws, like the capitularies
of Charlemagne, were public orders or proclamations. Under the sixth
governor, when civilian officials had arrived, his authority received
its first limitation: a small council was instituted, consisting of the
chief justice, the attorney general, and the archdeacon of Sydney. A few
years later the council was enlarged by the inclusion of new officials,
and an equal number of unofficial citizens, who were, however, nominated
by the crown. So far, we are still in the twelfth English century. In
1828 began fourteen years of agitation for an elective council, and with
1842 we arrive at the colonial Magna Charta. The concession had hardly
been made when, with the influx of fresh settlers, another agitation for
all the rights of self-government was begun. It was complicated with
the convict question, as the politics of the United States was long
complicated with the slavery question, but was not settled with, though
it may have been accelerated by, the settlement of that in 1848. Eight
years later full self-government was granted, largely through the agency
of one man. As a Wentworth had aided in subverting the liberties of
Englishmen, a second Wentworth redeemed the honor of his name by proving
the Shaftesbury of a second revolution, and procuring freedom for their
Australian descendants. Subsequent developments repeat the English
reforms of 1832, 1867, and 1881. Thus the colony described in less than
a century the evolution which it had taken the mother country fourteen
hundred years to accomplish. Younger colonies, omitting the earlier
stages, ran the same distance in far shorter periods.
They are not only repeating, they are anticipating, the history of the
parent state. Female suffrage has been conceded in two Australasian
colonies, and it is inevitable in the rest. The domination of a
socialist democracy is far advanced in the two former. The referendum,
or direct appeal to the people on specific issues, is on the eve of
general enactment. Ministries elected by the legislature are possibly
in the near future. Thus legislative bodies which sprang from the
crown are more democratic than those that sprang from the people.
Withal, the former retain an anomalous vestige of their origin. While
the business of legislation in Congress is necessarily conducted by
members who have no official connection with the executive, as it
was originally in the English Parliament, the British and colonial
ministries claim an ever-increasing monopoly of legislation on all
questions of any magnitude. It has long been recognized as impossible
for a private member to carry through the House of Commons a measure
of any consequence, and a colonial ministry arrests the progress of
a successful bill by intimating that the subject of it can only be
legislated upon by the Government.
The free involution of a legislature from below is naturally more rapid
than its reluctant devolution from above. The swift development of the
Massachusetts Company into the Massachusetts Legislature has been ably
traced by Professor Fiske, who is a sociologist as well as a historian.
The attempt to transact public business at a primary meeting of all the
freemen in the colony, assembling four times a year, repeats the old
Witenagemot, and failed for the same reason as that died out--because,
from the expansion of the population, the assemblage was impracticable.
It needed only four years for the freemen to acquire the right of
sending deputies to the General Court, and only fifteen to bring about a
permanent division into two Houses. Other early colonies passed through
the same stages; colonies of later foundation took up the development
at the bicameral stage. It is the history of a land and colonization
company of those days, or of a railway company in ours. The directors
become a Senate and the body of shareholders the popular House; the
statutes of the company are its constitution and the by-laws its
legislation. The origin of charter legislatures in a company explains a
parallel anomaly to that in crown legislatures. While the representative
Houses in British colonial legislatures have followed the House of
Commons in gathering all power into their own hands, in states descended
from the charter companies the House of Representatives has been losing,
while the Senate has gained authority. In both cases the apparent
anomaly is the outcrop of a deeper law. The ministry in the one case
and the senate in the other are each the embodiment of that continuous
social germ-plasm to which the popular will of the hour stands in
the same relation as the individual life does to the physiological
germ-plasm; and, as the latter is the true substance of the body, the
social germ-plasm is the substance of society, incarnating its permanent
interests, and therefore justly overriding the cries, the whims, the
passions of the hour.
The same dichotomy is visible in the colonial _judicature_. The
_paterfamilias_, the village elder, the tribal chief, the king, possess
and personally exercise an undelegated jurisdiction. Fully twenty years
ago a sociological worker surprised a historian of some pretensions,
who was conversant with the mere events of his special period, by
informing him that the practice of English kings to preside in their
own courts of justice came as far down as that very period--the reign
of James I. This prerogative was transmitted with the other attributes
of royalty to the governors of crown colonies, who "generally acted as
judges, sitting in the highest court." A New Jersey Cincinnatus revived
primitive simplicities by hearing causes seated on a tree stump in his
fields. The successive delegations of this power repeat the necessary
concessions that created the English judiciary. Side by side with the
royal prerogative grew up a popular jurisdiction which developed into
the jury; and it would be worth while to compare the acquisition of
this constitutional right (for example, in Connecticut and New South
Wales) with its history in England. Out of this element, and also as a
corollary from the election of a governor who was chief judge, came the
practice of electing judges in the North American colonies. It was by no
means confined to the charter colonies. Nowhere was the determination
toward an elective judiciary more noticeable than in Pennsylvania,
whose proprietary was its feudal sovereign. It may be historically
explained from the corrupt and servile judicature of the age when these
colonies were founded. The attachment to the old system in contemporary
British colonies may also be explained from the very different point
in the history of the mother country when they were given off, when
the talent, the purity, and independence of the bench had become the
pride of Englishmen, and the judges were Baconian in everything but
the taking of bribes. The English and (naturally in a far less degree)
the colonial courts still show traces of their royal origin in the
antiquated wig and gown, the arrogance of the judges, their haughty
point of honor--"contempt of court," and their aristocratic bias. These
are counterbalanced by the increasing strength of the popular element. A
hopeful bill was a few years ago introduced into a colonial legislature
restraining judges from commenting on evidence. A mere act of Parliament
would have as much effect on lawyers' loquacity as Mrs. Partington's
mop had on the Atlantic. It is, nevertheless, in the direction of
restricting the powers of the judges that the more radical colonies
are moving. In one southern community certain causes may be tried by
a judge with a jury of four, who will probably rise into assessors,
and in another that important step is possibly on the point of being
taken. The courageous Premier of South Australia, who lately defied the
entire English medical profession, has now taken in hand his own not
less formidable guild. He proposes that "in proceedings under certain
acts the bench is to consist of a judge of the Supreme Court with two
lay assessors, one appointed by each party to the suit"; and counselors
are peremptorily excluded from such proceedings. In certain other cases
litigants may submit statements of their differences to judges who will
adjudicate without the intervention of counsel. Thus the same middle
point may be reached from opposite termini. A series of levelings down
may bring judicatures of royal origin to the same stage as popular
jurisdictions have reached by a gradual leveling up. The courts will
then unite the majesty of the law, whose "voice is the harmony of the
world," with an impartiality and inexpensiveness that will insure to
every citizen the enjoyment of the most elementary of all rights--the
right to justice.
Side by side with the process of differentiation within colonies rose
up an integration of colonies with one another, which also repeats the
history of the mother country. The same principles of authority and
consent, again in unequal proportions, are blended here. It was by
conquest that the seven old English kingdoms were welded into a united
England, Strathclyde incorporated, Ireland annexed. By force disguised
as bribery, aided by the patriotic or interested efforts of a few
nobles and placemen and in opposition to the will of the inhabitants,
Scotland and Ireland were joined to England. Some four or five groups
of British colonies have reduplicated, or are now reduplicating, a
parallel development. In North America it was preceded and accompanied
by altercations among the different colonies. Boundary disputes
repeat old English intertribal struggles. Tariff wars are now waged,
and commercial reciprocity treaties contracted, between contemporary
colonies. New Haven and Connecticut, which consisted of towns federated
by consent, were united by force. Voluntary alliances against the
Indians or to conquer Canada, or involuntary unions under despotic
rulers, associated larger or smaller North American groups from Maine
to Maryland. The loose confederation of 1781 was too voluntary to last.
The final federation that superseded it had a large element of latent
force mixed with consent. It was hardly less a conquest of the North by
the South than that of the Heptarchy by Wessex. The Constitution is a
monument of Southern ascendency. So it was that, for seventy years off
and on, the United States was governed by a Southern oligarchy, whether
under the hegemony of Virginia or of South Carolina. The dominion of
Canada means (even under a French premier) the dominion of Ontario, with
Quebec bribed, and Newfoundland not bribed enough, to enter. In 1876 the
ten New Zealand provinces were amalgamated under a central Government
which for many years remained that of the earlier-settled North Island.
A federation of the Australian colonies planned seven years ago under
the auspices of protectionist Victoria, is likely to succeed under the
leadership of free-trading New South Wales. Mr. Rhodes is advising the
federation of the British colonies of South Africa; forty years ago a
federation of all the South African states was designed by Sir George
Grey, then high commissioner, but with little patriotism and still
less wisdom, for at that time it necessarily implied the dominance of
the Dutch element. In 1846 that far-seeing statesman had projected a
union of the South Sea Islands with New Zealand. Only four years ago
the same aged prophet of federation, with an eloquence inspired by
the theme, outlined to a Liberal audience a scheme for federating the
English-speaking peoples. These are dreams; but the dreams of to-day are
the realities of to-morrow, and every step taken toward the realization
of them is itself a gain.
ARCHITECTURAL FORMS IN NATURE.
BY F. S. DELLENBAUGH.
"Semblance of castle and arch and shrine
Towered aloft in the clear sunshine."
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--COMPLETED BRIDGE. NATURAL BRIDGE VIRGINIA]
The world is old, yet the world is new. It is old in our sight because
it has endured for a time that from our puny standpoint seems long, but
which, gauged by the standard of eternity, would barely be represented
by a single tick on the dial that knows no beginning and no end. It is
a work still in process; when it is done the human element will not be
here to admire or condemn it. When in the long ages of its development
parts of the solid crust have been pushed above the waters, the elements
have combined to pull them down and sink them again under the seas. It
is a battle between the waters and the dry land, and when during the
refreshing shower we see the rivulet at our feet brown with mud, we see
the victory of the rain; we see the price the earth is paying to this
subtle foe. This warfare goes on day by day, year by year, age by age,
and will go on as long as a dry rock rears its head above the deep. The
rains and frosts and winds, acting on the exposed surface with unceasing
energy, have in many localities produced strange contours and striking
resemblances to objects familiar in our daily life, especially to
buildings and other structures due to the hand of man. These are often
on a giant scale. But, in addition to the quality of size, these natural
forms possess as well the ever-important element of beauty, without
which bigness is vulgarity. Nature is never vulgar. Whether we look upon
the roadside violet that wilts under the touch, or whether we stand
wondering at Niagara, or strain to see the tiptop rock of the Grand
Cañon, we may always discern a radiant beauty, which pervades the world
to its foundations, and is poured out upon us unmeasured and unpriced.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--COMPLETED ARCH.]
So these architectural forms that result from the perennial battle
between the dry land and the sea, no matter what their size, are
charming in majesty, in proportion, in harmony of color, and in variety
and grace of outline. Our imaginations are constantly in search of
resemblances, and it is not strange, therefore, that every land presents
to human curiosity numerous specimens, though it must be admitted that
the mind is sometimes taxed to discover the likeness. On the other
hand, some are so evident as to have acquired a world-wide celebrity.
The Natural Bridge of Virginia (Fig. 1) is not only a resemblance, it
is a reality. In the Rocky Mountain region are numerous other bridges
formed thus naturally. In the Cañon of Desolation, Green River, Utah,
far above the water are many natural arches in the thinner salients of
the monster cliffs. These perforations are often two thousand feet above
the river, looking like enormous windows opening on some other world.
In one a pine tree that must have been at least a hundred feet high was
growing, and its top was many feet below the crown of the arch. Wherever
this particular formation is exposed, these arches or bridges occur
in all stages of development. The sandstone of this formation has the
peculiarity of fracturing conchoidally, and when the face of a cliff
contains one of these fractures (due to weathering) and is not thick,
some crevice is sure to open a path to the enemy, which is soon widened
to a highway for the frost and rain, and a cascade in shower-time pours
down, picking up sand as it goes to help in the attack. The weathering
becomes more rapid, the arch opens up, and in time a natural bridge
(Fig. 2) spans the air where once there was but solid stone. The process
continuing, the bridge will disappear, a vacancy will take its place,
and far off in the river bottom, or still farther in the sea, will rest
the disintegrated material that once made part of the continuous cliff.
Where the cliff is too thick to be perforated (Fig. 3), the arch breaks
back into a deep cavern whose roof falls and falls till the blue sky
takes its place. Thus has a natural bridge, like a flower, its birth,
its growth, perfection, and decay. Wind erosion also plays a part, but
the chief work is due to water.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--MIDDLE STAGE OF A BRIDGE OR ARCH.]
Besides bridges there are numberless other forms. Who has not seen
Castle or Pulpit Rocks, or Devil's Slides, or Palisades, etc.? But it is
in the West, perhaps, that the most remarkable rain carvings and wind
carvings occur, and especially in that part called the Southwest, that
"land as old as time is old," that strange, weird land of red rocks, of
tall, long cliff lines like mountain ranges split asunder to span the
desert in their nakedness; that land of labyrinthine cañons, where the
bloom of morning lingers to kiss the gloom of night; land of isolated
buttes that frown in lofty silence on the lower world like monuments
belonging to some cemetery of giants; land of _mesas_, plateaus,
pinnacles, and peaks.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--"GARDEN OF THE GODS."]
The massive red-and-yellow buttes at Green River, Wyoming, are familiar
to passengers on the Union Pacific Railway, and have been beautifully
rendered on canvas by Thomas Moran. Visitors to Colorado Springs will
not forget the superb "Steeple" and "Cathedral" rocks in the Garden
of the Gods (Fig. 4), whose gorgeous vermilion is thrust vertically
into the Colorado blue; and many there are who have seen the wonders
of the Yellowstone and the Yosemite. In all these places there are
architectural forms that have justly received the admiring tribute of
thousands, yet in more remote regions are forms quite as remarkable that
have seldom been seen by the eyes of white men.
While riding northward across the Navajo Indian Reservation from Fort
Defiance, I well remember seeing, at a distance of a mile or so,
which may have "lent enchantment to the view," an immense arch in
red sandstone, and, more interesting still, one of the most perfect
suggestions of a building I have ever seen. To go closer at the time
was not practicable, nor even to stop for a more deliberate study, but
they were in sight from the slow-moving cavalcade for a considerable
time, and I have always remembered them as about the most perfect
architectural forms I have seen in all the West.
Pinnacles and multitudinous other forms were also there, and a close
inspection would doubtless have discovered many quite as near perfection
as those which attracted us from afar.
In other places in this same locality huge volcanic masses had been
pushed mysteriously, in remote geological time, here and there through
the strata of sandstones, and the layers of water-made rocks having
been subsequently cut away by the rains, the harder fire-made rocks
offering more resistance were left behind in tall spires, towers, and
various fantastic shapes. To one of them, revealing from the mountains
above it a central mass with winglike dikes spreading out on each side,
the Navajos have applied the name of _Tsebetai_, "The Stone Bird," and
by this name it is now known to all who enter the barren and peculiar
country. Gazing down upon it one day from the crest of the Tunicha
Plateau, I was instantly impressed by the felicity of the Indian title,
for there it lay upon the plain exactly like a great buzzard petrified
with wings outstretched for flight.
As a rule, it is not the volcanic rocks that furnish the close images
of bird, beast, or building. The sedimentary or water-made rocks yield
the greatest number and the closest resemblances. Even in towers
and pinnacles the water-made rocks, though softer, come out ahead,
frequently sending up their splendid shafts to hundreds of feet, or to a
full thousand, like the "Captains" in De Chelly Cañon, Arizona (Fig. 5).
Minarets and spires from one hundred to three or four hundred feet high
might be counted by thousands in the cliff and cañon country.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--THE CAPTAINS.]
In far-away Greenland Dr. Kane came upon the red sandstone, "dreamy
semblance of a castle flanked with triple towers, completely isolated
and defined," which he named the "Three Brothers Turrets" (Fig. 6). Not
far from this he found a still more singular and impressive shaft, whose
poetical symmetry caused him to name it "Tennyson's Monument" (Fig. 7).
This he describes thus: "A single cliff of greenstone, marked by the
slaty limestone that once incased it, rears itself from a crumbled base
of sandstones, like the boldly chiseled rampart of an ancient city. At
its northern extremity, on the brink of a deep ravine which has worn its
way among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or minaret tower, as
sharply finished as if it had been cast for the Place Vendôme. Yet the
length of the shaft alone is four hundred and eighty feet, and it rises
on a plinth or pedestal itself two hundred and eighty."
In some of the cañons of the Great Walled River, the Colorado of the
West, turrets, pinnacles, and even natural arches stud the walls
with countless imitations of architectural forms, every bend of the
stream offering some fresh novelty. In parts of Marble Cañon the high
walls are eroded into endless alcoves, caves, towers, weather-beaten
castles, and a thousand and one weird or fantastic forms. One night,
just below our camp, was a perfect semblance of a ruined castle. Around
the indentations which answered for crumbling windows clung carelessly
bunches of mosses and ferns, while at one side from a mass of emerald
verdure, rendered greener and sweeter by contrast with the miles on
miles of barren red cliff up and down, gushed forth a clear spring whose
waters, churned to silver, dashed through the vines into the deep river
a hundred feet below.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--THREE BROTHERS TURRETS.]
In the Cañon of Desolation, twenty-four hundred feet above the surface
of the river, surrounded by pine trees, is a formation that seemed
from below so exact a counterpart of a pioneer log cabin that it was
difficult to believe it was only a deception. The beetling wall which
it surmounted was named "Log Cabin Cliff."