Слике страница
PDF
ePub

There are no people on earth more jealous of their personal liberty than the English.

They have hanged one another, and cut one another to pieces often enough, but it must be done according to law, or in defense of some right, traditional or otherwise.

They will endure heavy burdens, submit to any amount of taxation, but they will be locally independ ent and free.

The poorest beggar in England is as proud of the rights guaranteed to him in Magna Charta as any peer of the realm, and he will fight for them as quickly.

And well may they be jealous of their rights; for they have purchased them at a very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idols of arbitrary power set up by their Norman kings.

The government of England has been as tempestuous as the sea that surrounds it; but the struggles of its people have ever been for the blessings of local independence, and against the despotic tendency of centralized power.

This was the noble spirit which our ancestors brought with them to this continent.

Our forefathers were true Saxons. It was a natural love of independence that led them to brave the terrors of the ocean, and to face the savage wildness of this wilderness realm.

And here we may pause for a moment to reflect upon what may now appear to us like an interposition of Divine Providence, that all the earlier plans of colonizing this continent were such signal failures.

Had they not been failures, this continent would have been settled by a very different class of men from our

forefathers, and principles of government altogether different from theirs would have been established here.

Indeed, had not all the earlier projects for colonization failed, we of the present day, or the like of us, would not be here.

It is fearful to think of what we might have been, had the continent been settled by the Europe of the sixteenth instead of the seventeenth century.

The only pride we can take in reflecting upon the meditated colonizations of the sixteenth century, is to find connected with them such names as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Sir Philip Sidney.

It is a remarkable fact that all that has survived of the undertakings of these great men to colonize America is the word " Virginia."

And the fact is worth alluding to, that when, in 1590, Spenser gave to the world the first part of "THE FAERIE QUEEN," he dedicated his book to "The most high, mighty, and magnificent Empresse, renowned for pietie, virtue, and all gracious government, Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and Virginia."

Had the plans of colonization in the age of Elizabeth succeeded," they would have resulted in the establishment on this continent of vast feudal principalities, to be continued under rulers who would have been no less than viceroys, or to be resumed under the immediate sovereignty of the throne.”

Such an occupation of this continent could never have led to the establishment of the popular and free institutions founded by our fathers.

At the period of the successful colonization, the progress of constitutional government had developed new sentiments of allegiance, and new powers of resistance.

The reign of the Tudors in England had ended; and although the royal claims of the Stuarts might have been as high as the Tudors, yet, with the passing away of the latter, there was a revival among the people of the ancient Saxon principle of local government-of county and shire independence.

And so that Saxonism—or the principle of local selfgovernment-after battling with the Norman centralism that clung about the British throne for more than a thousand years, at last got itself fairly transplanted to these Western shores.

Now a new era for man begins. Now freedom gets wings and space-like the caged eagle, which, after long beating itself against the bars of its own prison, is let out at length, to bathe its eye in the sunbeam, and pillow its breast upon the storm.

Not that any new principles of government were discovered-but ideas of human liberty, which were, indeed, older than the Grecian republics, here found a place for expansion, not only from their own inherent force, but from the absence of coercive restraint.

Fortunately for the young colonies, the British throne was three thousand miles away.

Fortunately for the progress of Saxon independence on these shores, three thousand miles of dangerous waters intervened between them and the centralized power of a crown.

We were for a long time let alone, because it was not very convenient to meddle with us.

Mr. Burke, in his great speech on conciliation with America, said: "The colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours. They are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraint of a watchful and suspicious government, but through a wise and

The reign of the Tudors in England had ended; and although the royal claims of the Stuarts might have been as high as the Tudors, yet, with the passing away of the latter, there was a revival among the people of the ancient Saxon principle of local government-of county and shire independence.

And so that Saxonism-or the principle of local selfgovernment-after battling with the Norman centralism that clung about the British throne for more than a thousand years, at last got itself fairly transplanted to these Western shores.

Now a new era for man begins. Now freedom gets wings and space-like the caged eagle, which, after long beating itself against the bars of its own prison, is let out at length, to bathe its eye in the sunbeam, and pillow its breast upon the storm.

Not that any new principles of government were discovered-but ideas of human liberty, which were, indeed, older than the Grecian republics, here found a place for expansion, not only from their own inherent force, but from the absence of coercive restraint.

Fortunately for the young colonies, the British throne was three thousand miles away.

Fortunately for the progress of Saxon independence on these shores, three thousand miles of dangerous waters intervened between them and the centralized power of a crown.

We were for a long time let alone, because it was not very convenient to meddle with us.

Mr. Burke, in his great speech on conciliation with America, said: "The colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours. They are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraint of a watchful and suspicious government, but through a wise and

« ПретходнаНастави »