Voici un fait entièrement nouveau dans le monde,et dont l'imagination elle-même ne saurait saisir la portée.
TOCQUEVILLE
In the spring of 1879 I gave at the Old South Meeting-house in Boston acourse of lectures on the discovery and colonization of America, and presently,through the kindness of my friend Professor Huxley, the course was repeatedat University College in London. The lectures there were attended by verylarge audiences, and awakened such an interest in American history thatI was invited to return to England in the following year and treat of someof the philosophical aspects of my subject in a course of lectures at theRoyal Institution.
In the three lectures which were written in response to this invitation,and which are now published in this little volume, I have endeavoured toillustrate some of the fundamental ideas of American politics by settingforth their relations to the general history of mankind. It is impossiblethoroughly to grasp the meaning of any group of facts, in any departmentof study, until we have duly compared them with allied groups of facts;and the political history of the American people can be rightly understoodonly when it is studied in connection with that general process of politicalevolution which has been going on from the earliest times, and of whichit is itself one of the most important and remarkable phases. The governmentof the United States is not the result of special creation, but of evolution.As the town-meetings of New England are lineally descended from the villageassemblies of the early Aryans; as our huge federal union was long agoforeshadowed in the little leagues of Greek cities and Swiss cantons; sothe great political problem which we are (thus far successfully) solvingis the very same problem upon which all civilized peoples have been workingever since civilization began. How to insure peaceful concerted actionthroughout the Whole, without infringing upon local and individual freedomin the Parts,--this has ever been the chief aim of civilization, viewedon its political side; and we rate the failure or success of nations politicallyaccording to their failure or success in attaining this supreme end. Whenthus considered in the light of the comparative method, our American historyacquires added dignity and interest, and a broad and rational basis issecured for the detailed treatment of political questions.
When viewed in this light, moreover, not only does American historybecome especially interesting to Englishmen, but English history is clothedwith fresh interest for Americans. Mr. Freeman has done well in insistingupon the fact that the history of the English people does not begin withthe Norman Conquest. In the deepest and widest sense, ourAmerican historydoes not begin with the Declaration of Independence, or even with the settlementsof Jamestown and Plymouth; but it descends in unbroken continuity fromthe days when stout Arminius in the forests of northern Germany successfullydefied the might of imperial Rome. In a more restricted sense, the statesmanshipof Washington and Lincoln appears in the noblest light when regarded asthe fruition of the various work of De Montfort and Cromwell and Chatham.The good f