Formation of the Union | Page 6

a rude comfort; they were tenacious of their
rights, as became offshoots of the Anglo-Saxon race. In dealing with

their Indian neighbors and their slaves they were masterful and
relentless. In their relations with each other they were accustomed to
observe the limitations of the law. In deference to the representatives of
authority, in respect for precedent and for the observances of unwritten
custom, they went beyond their descendants on the frontier.
Circumstances in America have greatly changed in a century and a half:
the type of American character has changed less. The quieter,
longer-settled communities of that day are still fairly represented by
such islands of undisturbed American life as Cape Cod and Cape
Charles. The industrious and thriving built good houses, raised good
crops, sent their surplus abroad and bought English goods with it, went
to church, and discussed politics. In education, in refinement, in
literature and art, most of the colonists had made about the same
advance as the present farmers of Utah. The rude, restless energy of
modern America was not yet awakened.
4. INHERITED INSTITUTIONS.
[Sidenote: Sources of American government.]
In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were
distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which
were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth.
One of the strongest and most persistent elements in national
development has been that inheritance of political traditions and usages
which the new settlers brought with them. Among the more rigid sects
of New England the example of the Hebrew theocracy, as set forth in
the Scriptures, had great influence on government; they were even
more powerfully affected by the ideas of the Christian commonwealth
held by the Protestant theologians, and particularly by John Calvin. The
residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later
conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact
with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch. To some
degree the colonial conception of government had been affected by the
English Commonwealth of 1649, and the English Revolution of 1688.
The chief source of the political institutions of the colonies was
everywhere the institutions with which they were familiar at the time of

the emigration from England. It is not accurate to assert that American
government is the offspring of English government. It is nearer the
truth to say that in the middle of the seventeenth century the Anglo-
Saxon race divided into two branches, each of which developed in its
own way the institutions which it received from the parent stock. From
the foundation of the colonies to 1789 the development of English
government had little influence on colonial government. So long as the
colonies were dependent they were subject to English regulation and
English legal decisions, but their institutions developed in a very
different direction.
[Sidenote: Political ideas.]
Certain fundamental political ideas were common to the older and the
younger branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, and have remained
common to this day. The first was the idea of the supremacy of law, the
conception that a statute was binding on the subject, on the members of
the legislative body, and even on the sovereign. The people on both
sides of the water were accustomed to an orderly government, in which
laws were made and administered with regularity and dignity. The next
force was the conception of an unwritten law, of the binding power of
custom. This idea, although by no means peculiar to the English race,
had been developed into an elaborate "common law,"--a system of legal
principles accepted as binding on subject and on prince, even without a
positive statute. Out of these two underlying principles of law had
gradually developed a third principle, destined to be of incalculable
force in modern governments,-- the conception of a superior law,
higher even than the law-making body. In England there was no written
constitution, but there was a succession of grants or charters, in which
certain rights were assured to the individual. The long struggle with the
Stuart dynasty in the seventeenth century was an assertion of these
rights as against the Crown. In the colonies during the same time those
rights were asserted against all comers,--against the colonial governors,
against the sovereign, and against Parliament. The original colonies
were almost all founded on charters, specific grants which gave them
territory and directed in what manner they should carry on government
therein. These charters were held by the colonists to be irrevocable

except for cause shown to the satisfaction of a court of law; and it was a
recognized right of the individual to plead that a colonial law was void
because contrary to the charter. Most of the grants had lapsed or had
been forcibly, and even illegally, annulled; but the principle still