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In his relations to congress, to the states, even to the citizens, as well as in those to foreigners, whether allies or enemies, he had been almost as much the civil as the military head of the country. The arm that had led the nation through the field was now lifted to point out the paths that opened beyond. "According to the system of policy the states shall adopt at this moment". thus Washington wrote to the governors of the states, on disbanding the army-"they will stand or fall; and, by their confirmation or lapse, it is yet to be decided whether the revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse-a blessing or a curse, not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved. There are four things," he continued, "which I humbly conceive are essential to the well-being, I may even venture to say to the existence, of the United States as an independent power:

"(1) An indissoluble union of the states under one federal head. "(2) A sacred regard to public justice.

"(3) The adoption of a proper peace establishment. And

"(4) The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the people of the United States which will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies; to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity; and, in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the community."d'

John Fiske, in concluding his history of the Revolution, thus sums up its work in both countries: "It was a day of bitter humiliation for George III and the men who had been his tools. It was a day of happy omen for the English race, in the Old World as well as in the New. For the advent of Lord Rockingham's ministry meant not merely the independence of the United States; it meant the downfall of the only serious danger with which English liberty has been threatened since the expulsion of the Stuarts. The personal government which George III had sought to establish, with its wholesale corruption, its shameless violations of public law, and its attacks upon freedom of speech and of the press, became irredeemably discredited and tottered to its fall; while the great England of William III, of Walpole, of Chatham, of the younger Pitt, of Peel, and of Gladstone was set free to pursue its noble career. Such was the priceless boon which the younger nation, by its sturdy insistence upon the principles of political justice, conferred upon the elder. The decisive battle of freedom in England, as well as in America, and in that vast colonial world for which Chatham prophesied the dominion of the future, had now been fought and won. And foremost in accomplishing this glorious work had been the lofty genius of Washington and the steadfast valour of the men who suffered with him at Valley Forge and whom he led to victory at Yorktown."i

A GREAT political principle had been strengthened by the success of the Revolution; republican government had been revived in a fashion unknown since ancient times. The territory claimed by Virginia was larger than the island of Great Britain. The federal republic included an area nearly four times as large as that of France. The suffrage was still limited to the holders of land; but the spirit of the Revolution looked towards abolishing all legal distinctions between man and man; and the foundation of later democracy, with its universal suffrage, was thus already laid. The influence of the republican spirit upon the rest of the world was not yet discerned; but the United States had established for themselves two principles which seriously affected other nations. Forty years later not one of the Spanish continental colonies acknowledged the authority of the home government. The other principle was that of the rights of man. The success of the Revolution was a shock to the system of privilege and of class exemptions from the common burdens, which had lasted since feudal times. The French Revolution of 1789 was an attempt to apply upon alien ground the principles of the American Revolution.-ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.6

JOHN FISKE ON 'THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY" 1

"THE times that tried men's souls are over," said Thomas Paine in the last number of the Crisis, which he published after hearing that the negotiations for a treaty of peace had been concluded. Paine was sadly mistaken. The most trying time of all was just beginning. It is not too much to say that the period of five years following the peace of 1783 was the most critical moment in all the history of the American people. The dangers from which we were saved in 1788 were even greater than the dangers from which we were saved in 1865. In the war of Secession the love of union had come Reproduced by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Copyright, 1888, by John Fiske.

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to be so strong that thousands of men gave up their lives for it as cheerfully and triumphantly as the martyrs of older times, who sang their hymns of praise even while their flesh was withering in the relentless flames. In 1783 the love of union, as a sentiment for which men would fight, had scarcely come into existence. The souls of the men of that day had not been thrilled by the immortal eloquence of Webster, nor had they gained the historic experience which gave to Webster's words their meaning and their charm. The men of 1783 dwelt in a long, straggling series of republics fringing the Atlantic coast, bordered on the north and south and west by two European powers, whose hostility they had some reason to dread. Had there been such a government that the whole power of the thirteen states could have been swiftly and vigorously wielded as a unit, the British, fighting at such disadvantage as they did, might have been driven to their ships in less than a year. The length of the war and its worst hardships had been chiefly due to want of organisation. Congress had steadily declined in power and in respectability; it was much weaker at the end of the war than at the beginning, and there was reason to fear that as soon as the common pressure was removed the need for concerted action would quite cease to be felt, and the scarcely formed Union would break into pieces. There was an intensely powerful sentiment in favour of local self-government. This feeling was scarcely less strong as between states like Connecticut and Rhode Island, or Maryland and Virginia, than it was between Athens and Megara, Argos and Sparta, in the great days of Grecian history. A most wholesome feeling it was, and one which needed not so much to be curbed as to be guided in the right direction.

Unless the most profound and delicate statesmanship should be forthcoming to take this sentiment under its guidance, there was much reason to fear that the release from the common adhesion to Great Britain would end in setting up thirteen little republics, ripe for endless squabbling, like the republics of ancient Greece and mediæval Italy, and ready to become the prey of England and Spain, even as Greece became the prey of Macedonia.

Frederick of Prussia, though friendly to the Americans, argued that the mere extent of country from Maine to Georgia would suffice either to break up the Union or to make a monarchy necessary. No republic, he said, had ever long existed on so great a scale. The Roman Republic had been transformed into a despotism mainly by the excessive enlargement of its area. It was only little states, like Venice, Switzerland, and Holland, that could maintain a republican government. Such arguments overlooked three essential differences between the Roman Republic and the United States. The Roman Republic in Casar's time comprised peoples differing widely in blood, in speech, and in degree of civilisation; it was perpetually threatened on all its frontiers by powerful enemies, and representative assemblies were unknown to it. The only free government of which the Roman knew anything was that of the primary assembly or town-meeting. On the other hand, the people of the United States were all English in speech, and mainly English in blood. The differences in degree of civilisation between such states as Massachusetts and North Carolina were considerable, but in comparison with such differences as those between Attica and Lusitania they might well be called slight. The attacks of savages on the frontier were cruel and annoying, but never since the time of King Philip had they seemed to threaten the existence of the white man. A very small military establishment was quite enough to deal with the Indians. And, to crown all, the American people were thoroughly familiar with the principle of representation, having

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practised it on a grand scale for four centuries in England, and for more than a century in America. The governments of the thirteen states were all similar, and the political ideas of one were perfectly intelligible to all the others. It was essentially fallacious, therefore, to liken the case of the United States to that of ancient Rome.

But there was another feature of the case which was quite hidden from the men of 1783. Just before the assembling of the first continental congress, James Watt had completed his steam-engine; in the summer of 1787, while the federal convention was sitting at Philadelphia, John Fitch launched his first steamboat on the Delaware river; and Stephenson's invention of the locomotive was to follow in less than half a century. But for the military aid of railroads the government would hardly have succeeded in putting down the rebellion of the Southern states. In the debates on the Oregon Bill in the United States senate in 1843, the idea that the United States could ever have an interest in so remote a country as Oregon was loudly ridiculed by some of the members. It would take ten months, said George McDuffie, the very able senator from South Carolina, for representatives to get from that territory to the District of Columbia and back again. Yet, since the building of railroads to the Pacific coast, we can go from Boston to the capital of Oregon in much less time than it took John Hancock to make the journey from Boston to Philadelphia. Railroads and telegraphs have made that vast country, both for political and for social purposes, more snug and compact than little Switzerland was in the Middle Ages or New England a century ago.

It will be remembered that at the time of the Declaration of Independence there were three kinds of government in the colonies. Connecticut and Rhode Island had always been true republics. Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland presented the appearance of limited hereditary monarchies. The other eight colonies were viceroyalties, with governors appointed by the king, while in all alike the people elected the legislatures.

The organisation of the single state was old in principle and well understood by everybody. On the other hand, the principles upon which the various relations of the states to each other were to be adjusted were not well understood. There was wide disagreement upon the subject, and the attempt to compromise between opposing views was not at first successful. Hence, in the management of affairs which concerned the United States as a nation, we shall not find the central machinery working smoothly or quietly. We are about to traverse a period of uncertainty and confusion, in which it required all the political sagacity and all the good temper of the people to save the half-built ship of state from going to pieces on the rocks of civil contention.

Until the connection with England was severed the thirteen commonwealths were not united, nor were they sovereign. It is also clear that in the very act of severing their connection with England these commonwealths entered into some sort of union which was incompatible with their absolute Sovereignty taken severally. It was not the people of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and so on through the list, that declared their independence of Great Britain, but it was the representatives of the United States in congress assembled, and speaking as a single body in the name of the whole. Three weeks before this declaration was adopted, congress appointed a committee to draw up the "articles of confederation and perpetual union," by which the sovereignty of the several states was expressly limited and curtailed in many important particulars.