imperial system; they did not at first deny the authority of parliament over them, but they did deny that such authority included certain rights, and especially the right to tax them without their consent. According to the American theory, therefore, even at the beginning, the British empire was composed of integral parts, and each had, in some respects at least, the right of self-control unaffected by the law of the central legislature; each had at least the right to tax itself. To see how in response to British assertions this notion of the constitution of the English empire widened would be well worth our study; but we must now satisfy ourselves by saying that the advanced American leaders-confronted continually by the British assertion that to deny the power to tax was in logic to deny the authority of parliament altogether came to the point of asserting that parliament had no authority at all within the colonies, that the bond of connection between Great Britain and America was the king, and that the British empire had at least fourteen parliaments, one in Europe and thirteen across the Atlantic.

Not all Americans accepted this doctrine in its entirety; but even those that did accept it must have hesitated to admit its fullest conclusions; for to deny the authority of parliament was going some distance toward denial of a unity or a wholeness to the British empire; and, moreover, unless parliament had some authority beyond the British Isles, where rested the power to make war or peace, to regulate commerce and make treaties, to do certain other things of a purely general character? The difficulty of the situation is well illustrated by the following extract from the diary of John Adams, who recounts the trouble experienced by the first Continental Congress in deciding just what theory of the English constitution would be set forth: "The two points which laboured the most were: (1) Whether we should recur to the law of nature, as well as to the British constitution, and our American charters and grants. Mr. Galloway and Mr. Duane were for excluding the law of nature. I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it, as a resource to which we might be driven by parliament much sooner than we were aware. (2) The other great question was, what authority we should concede to parliament; whether we should deny the authority of parliament in all cases; whether we should allow any authority to it in our internal affairs; or whether we should allow it to regulate the trade of the empire with or without any restrictions. After a multitude of motions. had been made, discussed, negatived, it seemed as if we should never agree upon anything. Mr. John Rutledge, of South Carolina, one of the committee, addressing himself to me, was pleased to say, 'Adams, we must agree upon something; you appear to be as familiar with the subject as any of us, and I like your expressions-"the necessity of the case," and "excluding all ideas of taxation, external and internal"; I have a great opinion of that same idea of the necessity of the case, and I am determined against all taxation for revenue. Come, take the pen and see if you can't produce something that will unite us.' Some others of the committee seconding Mr. Rutledge, I took a sheet of paper and drew up an article. When it was read, I believe not one of the committee was fully satisfied with it; but they all soon acknowledged that there was no hope of hitting on anything in which we could all agree with more satisfaction. All therefore agreed to this, and upon this depended the union of the colonies. The sub-committee reported their draft to the grand committee, and another long debate ensued, especially on this article, and various changes and modifications of it were attempted, but none adopted." The resolution as formally adopted by the Continental Congress declared that the colonists were entitled to the "free and exclusive

power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures" "in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. But, from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament as are, bona fide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America, without their consent."

It is apparent from this that the men of the first Continental Congress could not reach an agreement as to the actual structure of the British empire, but they admitted that it was desirable to have some single body superintending commerce and external relations. If the general proposition of the Congress could by any process have been hardened into law, the English empire would have been constituted with fourteen parliaments, one of which, besides its ordinary legislative functions, would have had the right to regulate matters of purely general interest. In other words, tentatively the colonists were suggesting the idea of what we may call the federal organisation of the British system. Each of the self-governing colonies would, under this principle, be really self-governing, free from interference with its local concerns, and yet submitting to the regulation of its external trade and its foreign relations by a central government. It is plain enough that we have here an intimation of the kind of organisation which the states after declaring their independence finally worked out for themselves. It is noteworthy, too, that some Englishmen were beginning to see the possibility of solving the great problem of imperial organisation in some way besides merely asserting the comprehensive power of parliament; for Thomas Pownall declared that a colony was, "so far as respects its own jurisdiction within its own community, national though not independent," and he maintained that the colonists had a right to political liberty consistent with the vital unity, efficiency, and "salus suprema of the imperium of the sovereign state."

Such a proposition as this of Pownall seems to have received no consideration at Westminster, for indeed the incompetence of most of the British legislators to rise to the faintest conception of an organisation more complicated than the simple one they demanded is pathetic though not surprising. Burke, indeed, reaching a stage of real statesmanship, denounced the narrow logic of the lawgivers, and declared fervently that the question for parliament was not the question of power, but of duty. But most of the members of parliament did not try to get beyond the most rigid conception: either the colonies were subject to the parliament in all respects or they were subject in none. This inability to see one step beyond the narrowest confines of puny logic was enough to ruin the English empire. Nothing, as the old maxim goes, distorts history as does logic; certainly it may also be said that nothing so much as logic paralyses capacity for statesmanship.

And yet this problem of reconciling local liberty with general control, of combining local self government with imperial unity, was a problem of immense difficulty; and, if the Americans finally solved the problem, perhaps we should thank the situation and not credit American statesmen with peculiar wisdom. When America declared her separation from Great Britain in 1776, the problem of organising an empire of thirteen states crossed the Atlantic. The Americans must now find some way of organising the states into a unity harmonious with local liberty. Their first effort was not a success. The Articles of

Confederation, proposed in 1777 and fully adopted in the early part of 1781, were not suited to the needs of the situation. In most respects these Articles were products of decades of practice and experience, but in some particulars, and even in the distribution of power between the Congress of the Confederation and the individual states, there were some bad mistakes. The congress was not allowed to collect taxes, either direct internal taxes or duties, and it was not even allowed the power that the second Continental Congress was willing to concede to parliament, from the very necessity of the case, namely, the right to regulate commerce.

The commercial and social disorder of the years succeeding the war taught the Americans, however, the need of better organisation, and it is in the constitution of the United States that we see the consummation, the fruit of the American Revolution. We see first that by the adoption of the constitution the Americans solved the problem of reconciling local self government and local self-determination with imperial unity, of conserving local liberty and at the same time guarding general interests. This was done by establishing a federal state, what the German publicists call a Bundesstaat, "a banded state." The adoption of the federal constitution, too, marks the end of the Revolutionary period, because it ends a decade and more of constitutionmaking within which fundamental political notions were formulated and crystallised. By these constitutions, governments were established resting on the consent of the governed and subject to their will. The fundamental principle of them all was that government is but the creature and the servant of the people; they brought out clearly enough that government and the state are not identical, and that government cannot set the limits to its own authority; they announced by their practical work of construction the principle that there should be a government of law and not of men, because the constitution as law was set above all mere legislative enactment, and the framers of the constitution went as far as the art of man would allow to establish law above caprice. The American Revolution has therefore its interest, not because of the cleavage of the English race, however momentous that fact may be, nor because of the war and bloodshed, though it involved nearly one half of civilised mankind and profoundly stirred the rest; but because of the essential principles involved, because out of it came constitutions speaking the language of philosophy and involving ideas that in their wide and practical application were new in the history of mankind.

The principles fought for by the Americans were not lost on England herself. Her representative system, though influenced still by the practices of centuries and by the conditions of society, has been made to approach the model for which the colonists were contending. The theory that her government is omnipotent still remains, but individual freedom is secure. Her selfgoverning colonies are safely protected by habit and convention, while some of them are based on parliamentary enactments possessing in fact, if not in theory, the force and effect of written constitutions. Her general colonial system, though unsystematic, and though one of opportunism and not of law, recognises to the full the right of colonial self government. In fact England, instead of imitating Rome, in the building of a great empire, or of following the example of Spain as the mistress of numberless possessions and dominions, has scattered her colonists over the world as Greece strewed her citizens through the islands of the Egean, and as Greece held them only by ties of blood and affection for the mother city, so England's political bond is weak, while the tie of patriotism and affection is strong.

THE close association between the Dutch and Quaker colonies in America was due to no mere accident of contiguity. William Penn was Dutch on his mother's side, and one sees in all his political ideas the broad and liberal temper that characterised the Netherlands before and beyond any other country in Europe. In the cosmopolitanism which showed itself so early in New Amsterdam and has ever since been fully maintained, there were added to American national life the variety, the flexibility, the generous breadth of view, the spirit of compromise and conciliation needful to save the nation from rigid provincialism.-JOHN FISKE.b

DUTCH INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN HISTORY

HERE follows a pleasant relief from the previous chapters of seizure and bloodshed, a case of colonisation by purchase and treaty. It is true that the shrewd barterers gave the Indians paltry sums for large estates, but there was no competition to raise the market prices, and the title of the Indians was neither clear nor recorded. Most important of all was the recognition of the Indian's priority, of his right to existence, and of a wish to respect his feelings. There had been various isolated instances of this plan of purchase, as we have already seen, and William Penn hardly deserves his full measure of popular esteem as the first to deal fairly with the Indians. Furthermore, the pleasant relations suffered interruption, as they are bound to