ment, the causes which gave it birth, the spirit of its Constitution, and the spirit of its founders. Without this clear comprehension of causes and results, he can never be prepared to serve the state with ability, nor even to go intelligently to the ballot-box. In this respect the present generation are far behind their fathers. Those men studied Government as a science; we study party politics to win. The difference is infinite.

Why, then, did England lose the United States, and why must she lose every one of her colonies in the New World? The Thirteen Colonies were forced into independence. They had no alternative but to be absolutely free or absolutely enslaved. The idea of a Declaration of Independence dawned slowly on the American mind; and it was with the deepest reluctance that they at last took arms against the throne of England, by whose immovable base they were so fastly moored. The proofs of the loyalty of the colonists are scattered thick all through their history. There was not an American home in which the brilliant records of England's achievements were not read with pride.

Up to the time of the embarkation of our fathers, England was their country; and our ancestral history is the history of Britain. The great writers of England, till the period of the Commonwealth, wrote and thought for our fathers as much as for the fathers of any Englishman. Besides, around English history there is a charm which can be found in no other. The recent and the remote,—the plain and the obscure, novelty sprung up by the gray remains of antiquity,— all the elements of the touching, the beautiful, the gloomy, and the grand, mingle with the chronicles of the fatherland. With us all is familiar and modern. It is true, we read with pride and emotion our fathers' struggles, when the story leads off through the toils of the Revolution back to the gloom of the green old forests, and the desolation of Plymouth Landing, or the inhospitable banks of James River; but

there the story ceases in America, and we must cross the water for an account of our antecedent national existence. We personally, then, have an interest in England, and we can betimes forget America, as it slumbered on, unwaked by the sea-gun of Columbus, while we retrace the glory of our ancestors, through successive generations, to the time when the Roman conqueror first planted the eagle of Italy on the rocks of Britain and returned to tell of a stormy island in the ocean, and of the rugged barbarians who dwelt in its glens and hunted on its cliffs.

Yes, all this feeling in America was in favor of the supremacy of England here. But there was a stronger feeling still in the hearts of the colonists. It was an instinctive love of liberty; and although not a man in America could forecast the result, yet the great body of the American people were impelled by a political law, then not understood even by themselves, a law which has shaped and is shaping every institution on this side of the ocean.

It is as necessary to have the history of nations before us when we try to deduce the laws of empire, as it is to have the phenomena of the natural world for determining the laws of nature. In this glance we are making at the empires that have come and gone over this continent, we shall infallibly arise at a clear understanding of the law of government by which events are decided in our Western hemisphere.

France first lost her American possessions altogether, and then England lost all her colonies here worth the struggle of keeping. Those that were left have never paid the trouble or cost of governing. They have been too poor to govern themselves; for self-government is, after all, an expensive affair. Free states almost invariably tax themselves more than despots venture to impose. In proof we adduce our American cities, which are the most expensively governed municipalities in the world,-also our voluntarily sustained. clergy, who, taken as a body, are the best-paid priesthood in

Christendom, last of all, the tremendous self-imposed exactions for raising the Internal Revenue.

France held on to Louisiana for a long period after the fall of her empire at the north. But, at the first suggestion of Jefferson for the purchase, Napoleon asked, "What will they give for it?" "It is a vast territory, and it should be worth more than fifteen millions to the United States." not the question. Fifteen millions is far more than it is If we keep it a little longer, we shall get no

"That is

worth to us. thing for it. Take the money." This purchase of Louisiana blotted out French power from North America.

It was soon after this event that the period of revolution came for the old colonies of Spain and Portugal. Hardly had Napoleon been driven from the scenes of his great achievements, when the tocsin of independence sounded from one end of the Spanish New World to the other. And we cannot omit an allusion to a coincidence which we have never seen noticed. It was during the last days of Napoleon, and even while that terrific storm of May 4, 1821, was sweeping over St. Helena, tearing up most of the trees about Longwood, and shaking the humble dwelling where the hero of Austerlitz lay, that the last Spanish colony on this continent wrenched itself away forever from the greedy and remorseless grasp of the throne of Aragon and Castile. Her sale of Florida to our republic blotted her power from the continent.

And, now, how stands the question of empire in the New World? For all practical purposes, there is but one empire in North America at this hour; and we need not add that it is the dominion of this republic. Russia, indeed, holds nominal sway over a vast territory north of the British possessions, up to the Pole. But it very slightly concerns civilization to inquire what sceptre pretends to sway those icebound, inhospitable regions. England claims and professes to rule a broad, intervening belt, stretching across the

continent next to our frontier. But she scarcely interferes with these colonies, and allows them to govern themselves. She knows that to assert such rights over them as she tried to vindicate over us in 1776 would rend those colonies from her, as she would be equally sure to lose them by a collision with the United States. A reciprocity treaty has already effected a practical annexation of those colonies to this republic. English statesmen have at last learned something of the law of empire in the New World. They do not venture to interfere materially with the wants or the wishes of their colonies. Indeed, the thing has been carried so far to the other extreme that Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick complain that in the withdrawal of the usual body of English troops, business grows dull in their chief towns, and that the Queen's Government in other respects seems to treat the colonies too much as independent states and too little as loyal subjects. Thus the lesson has been taught that men in America must be free, and thus the lesson has been learned.

Such considerations show very plainly the irresistible tendency to national consolidation on this continent, and demonstrate the absurdity of any attempt to dissever or break up this Republic. All the tendencies are in the other direction; and if Jefferson Davis were a statesman he never would have made so stupendous a mistake. His blunder, if possible, was more gigantic than his crime.

22*

XXXVII.

The Quakers on the War-Path.

THIS insurrection has disturbed the deepest fountains of the life of our people,-both the good and the bad. It has agitated the serenest waters. Even the members of the Society of Friends have been, among the bravest and best contributors to the war. In the field their gallant sons have done all the duties of citizens as nobly as their fathers have performed them in the calmer scenes of domestic and civil life.

At one of the regular meetings of the Society of Friends (Orthodox) a committee was proposed to be raised to inquire into and attend to the cases of young men, sons of members, who it was supposed had, in clear violation of all the standard rules of the Society, enlisted for military service in this dreadful war. It was notorious that a large number of this class had actually shouldered the musket and marched with their regiments; and it was strongly suspected that many of these boys had actually received the warmest blessings of their demure but none the less heroic mothers, and the inspiring encouragement of gentle sisters, on their departure.

But, as the case had been brought up before the meeting by some of the strictest Friends, it became necessary to give it the most serious consideration; and the members of the committee were duly proposed.

The first rose, with great dignity, and, with that inimitable serenity which always characterizes the proceedings of the Orthodox Quakers, requested to be excused, on the ground that he could not conscientiously serve in that capacity, since,