CHAPTER I.

A RETROSPECT. EARLY MOVEMENTS TOWARD UNION.

1643-1781.

THE order of time brings us to the most cheering act in the political history of mankind, when thirteen republics, of which at least three reached from the sea to the Mississippi, formed themselves into one federal commonwealth. There was no revolt against the past, but a persistent and healthy progress. The sublime achievement was the work of a people led by statesmen of earnestness, perseverance, and public spirit, instructed by the widest experience in the forms of representative government, and warmed by that mutual love which proceeds from ancient connection, harmonious effort in perils, and common aspirations.

Scarcely one who wished me good speed when I first essayed to trace the history of America remains to greet me with a welcome as I near the goal. Deeply grateful as I am for the friends who rise up to gladden my old age, their encouragement must renew my grief for those who have gone before me.

While so much is changed in the living objects of personal respect and affection, infinitely greater are the transformations in the condition of the world. Power has come to dwell with every people, from the Arctic sea to the Mediterranean, from Portugal to the borders of Russia. From end to end of the United States, the slave has become a freeman; and the various forms of bondage have disappeared from European Christendom. Abounding harvests of scientific discovery have been garnered by numberless inquisitive minds, and the wild

est forces of nature have been taught to become the docile helpmates of man. The application of steam to the purposes of travel on land and on water, the employment of a spark of light as the carrier of thought across continents and beneath oceans, have made of all the inhabitants of the earth one society. A journey round the world has become the pastime of a holiday vacation. The morning newspaper gathers up and brings us the noteworthy events of the last four-and-twenty hours in every quarter of the globe. All states are beginning to form parts of one system. The "new nations," which Shakespeare's prophetic eye saw rising on our eastern shore, dwell securely along two oceans, midway between their kin of Great Britain on the one side and the oldest surviving empire on the other.

More than two thousand years ago it was truly said that the nature of justice can be more easily discerned in a state than in one man.* It may now be studied in the collective states of all the continents. The ignorance and prejudices that come from isolation are worn away in the conflict of the forms of culture. We learn to think the thought, to hope the hope of mankind. Former times spoke of the dawn of civilization in some one land; we live in the morning of the world. Day by day the men who guide public affairs are arraigned before the judgment-seat of the race. A government which adopts a merely selfish policy is pronounced to bo the foe of the human family. The statesman who founds and builds up the well-being of his country on justice has all the nations for a cloud of witnesses, and, as one of our own poets † has said, “The linkéd hemispheres attest his deed." He thrills the world with joy; and man becomes of a nobler spirit as he learns to gauge his opinions and his acts by a scale commensurate with his nature.

History carries forward the study of ethics by following the footsteps of states from the earliest times of which there is a record. The individual who undertakes to capture truth by solitary thought loses his way in the mazes of speculation, or involves himself in mystic visions, so that the arms which * Plato in the Republic, Book ii. Bekker, III., i., 78.

Emerson: The Adirondacks, 248.

he extends to embrace what are but formless shadows return empty to his own breast. To find moral truth, he must study man in action. The laws of which reason is conscious can be tested best by experience; and inductions will be the more sure, the larger the experience from which they are drawn. However great may be the number of those who persuade themselves that there is in man nothing superior to himself, history interposes with evidence that tyranny and wrong lead inevitably to decay; that freedom and right, however hard may be the struggle, always prove resistless. Through this assurance ancient nations learn to renew their youth; the rising generation is incited to take a generous part in the grand drama of time; and old age, staying itself upon sweet Hope as its companion and cherisher,* not bating a jot of courage, nor seeing cause to argue against the hand or the will of a higher power, stands waiting in the tranquil conviction that the path of humanity is still fresh with the dews of morning, that the Redeemer of the nations liveth.

The colonies, which became one federal republic, were founded by rival powers. That difference of origin and the consequent antagonism of interest were the motives to the first American union. In 1643 three New England colonies joined in a short-lived "confederacy" for mutual protection, especially against the Dutch; each member reserving its peculiar jurisdiction and government, and an equal vote in the general council.

Common danger gave the next impulse to collective action. Rivers, which were the convenient war-paths of the natives, flowed in every direction from the land of the Five Nations; against whom, in 1684, measures of defence, extending from North Carolina to the northern boundary of New England, were concerted. Later, in 1751, South Carolina joined northern colonies in a treaty with the same tribes.

On the side of England, James II., using the simple method of the prerogative of an absolute king, began the suppression of colonial legislatures, and the consolidation of colonies under * γλυκειά οἱ καρδίαν ἀτάλλοισα γηροτρόφος συναιρει ἐλπίς. Pindar in Plato, Republic, Book i. Bekker, III., i., 10.

the rule of one governor. After the English revolution of 1688 had gained consistency, the responsible government which it established would gladly have devised one uniform system of colonial administration; and in 1696 the newly created board of trade, of which John Locke was a member, suggested the appointment of a captain-general of all the forces on the continent of North America, with such power as could be exercised through the prerogative of a constitutional king.

In 1697 William Penn appeared before the board and advised an annual "congress" of two delegates from each one of the American provinces, to determine by plurality of voices the ways and means for supporting their union, providing for their safety, and regulating their commerce.

In 1721, to ensure the needed co-operation of the colonies in the rivalry of England with France for North American territory, the plan attributed to Lord Stairs provided for a lordlieutenant or captain-general over them all; and for a general council to which each provincial assembly should send two of its members, electing one of the two in alternate years. The lord-lieutenant of the king, in conjunction with the general council on behalf of the colonies, was then to allot the quotas of men and money which the several assemblies were to raise by laws of their own. All these projects slumbered among heaps of neglected papers.

On the final struggle between England and France, the zeal of the colonists surpassed that of the mother country. A union, proposed by Franklin in 1754, would have preserved the domestic institutions of the several colonies. For the affairs of the whole, a governor-general was to be appointed from England, and a legislature, in which the representation would have borne some proportion to population, was to be chosen triennially by the colonies. This plan, which foreshadowed the present constitution of the Dominion of Canada and the federation which with hope and applause was lately offered by rival ministries to South Africa, was at that day rejected by the British government with abhorrence and disdain.

The English administration confined itself next to methods for obtaining a colonial revenue. For this end Lord Halifax,