d. The germ of a ministry responsible directly to parliament

and indirectly to the people.

e. Freedom of speech and the press.

From all which great and _wholly_ self-derived institutions were created the instrumentalities of all political progress, both at home and abroad. Holland, it is true, had tolerations, but they were no less of native English growth.

Thus step by step can be traced the building of this great political edifice, whose architecture was so closely followed by our own American Constitution-builders.

The fundamental distinction between the English Government, as portrayed and developed in Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States, {131} is that the aim of the former instruments was to define and limit the powers of the monarch; while the latter sought at once to create, specify, and restrict the authority of the Federal Government. Both attempted to define and preserve the rights of the people. The main objects are one; the divergencies are the natural result of the prevailing conditions of both countries. The distinctive aim of English political development has been to obtain its objects by enlarging the powers of Parliament, while the fundamental purpose of the American people was to make a general government so constituted as to preserve both the rights of the States and people. These correlative purposes are remarkably illustrated in the method of construction, for by Magna Charta it is provided, "It is also sworn as well on our part as on the part of the Barons that all of the things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith and without evil subtility"--and in the Constitution of the United States it is set forth in effect that the Imperium is to be created, and then that the "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution--nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people "; the States being the reservoirs of all the free principles conferred by them out of their abundance on the general government.

Substantially all the powers which were conceded to belong to the monarch by these organic instruments, and by the political records of England, were specifically conferred by the Constitution of the United States upon the President.

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Before the commencement of the War of 1776, the first volume of Blackstone's _Commentaries_ was published and in the hands of all the American lawyers. The chapters upon the powers of Parliament and the prerogative of, and restrictions upon, kingly authority, were fully and perspicuously set forth therein. Here was the fountain from which much of the inspiration of the American Constitution makers was drawn. The influence of Blackstone and its predecessor, the _Spirit of Law_, by Montesquieu, both before and after the Revolution, was very great. Nor do I overlook the influence which arose from a study of Grecian history by some of its framers--although their studies were said to be somewhat superficial.[16]

Our Bill of Rights, which was not adopted until after the Constitution had been inaugurated, but which appears as the first ten amendments to that instrument, was almost literally copied from the Petition of Right, presented in the reign of Charles I., by Parliament (1628) and the Bill of Rights of 1689.

The Constitution of the United States contains new matter, especially as regards the delicate relation of the States to each other and to the newly constituted government, not to be found in Magna Charta, or in the Petition, or Bill of' Rights, growing as it did out of the necessity of providing for a new condition of affairs, but in everything fundamental and substantial relating to the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the {133} government, it has faithfully followed the principles of the English Constitution.

With the American appropriation and assimilation of these inherited political ideas, there exists language, literature, and all the rest of the kindred sympathies, making a tie stronger than blood, and culminating in the grand conception of federation developed into government, _i.e._, the Constitution of the United States.

Mr. Gladstone unites the view of the English and American Constitutions in the oft-quoted words ''as the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."

Who should acknowledge the value of all this, and the sacrifices which it has cost England, if not we, who have inherited it, fed upon it, grown upon it, and to-day livingly embody and exemplify it?

Is not sympathy and brotherhood between the two peoples, the natural, necessary, and inevitable outcome? "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder."

VI.--THE SAME LAWS, LEGAL CUSTOMS, AND GENERAL MODES OF JUDICIAL PROCEDURE

Closely allied to, if not a part of their political institutions, comes another natural feature of the alliance, an element more powerful than steel to rivet the bonds between the two nations, _i.e._, the {134} same laws, customs, and general modes of legal procedure.

The phenomenal and colossal development of North America is somewhat explained by the fact that we were not compelled to create or originate our political institutions, laws, or judicial modes of procedure; these were all ready for us when we commenced the business of an independent government. The materials were at hand with which we were to build the grand structure of democracy. Whatever difficulty was experienced in the design, whatever time was spent in the building, was attributable to the jealousies, fears and anxieties of the delegates who represented the thirteen original independent States in the Constitutional Convention. The great and almost insurmountable barrier to the creation of the Republic arose out of an inability to agree to a common basis of association on becoming members of the same family, and surrendering the independent and supreme rights of sovereignty which each of the contracting parties possessed. As colonies we knew no law but the common law; we profited by its utility; we imbibed its teachings; no study was more general among the people. After the Union had become a _fait accompli_, in most of the States it was solemnly adjudged to remain in force. A new field, corresponding to the growth and importance of the country, was opened to its influence, both here and in England. The two countries now mutually profit by each other in this respect, finding a never-failing source of legal illumination, not only in their judicial {135} precedents and statutory enactments, but in the many admirable text-books--critical, expository and historical, which deal with almost every conceivable subject of private or public rights and duties, in all their practical and ethical relations. Thus that mighty instrumentality, the Law, remains substantially the same in both countries.

We fought the battles of the Revolution to become an independent nation, but when we were free we established New England; we voluntarily adopted every important principle of public and private jurisprudence of the Mother country, and clothed ourselves anew with her legal and judicial garments. The materials of which our governmental house was built, the legal furniture which was used in its embellishment and decoration, we took from the well-stored warehouse of English institutions, and Gladstone's eulogy, which I have quoted above, is no less deserved because the builders of this new government assimilated the architecture and appropriated the materials of existing political institutions and legal principles to their new structure.

But we would be a strange people--wholly careless of history, utterly indifferent to our own political genealogy, if we did not realise and appreciate this splendid record which England had been making through bloody sacrifices and internal struggles for more than twelve centuries--from the reign of Alfred the Great to that of William III., the fruits of which were so fully utilised and enjoyed by us in the establishment of {136} our government. I am not stopping to coin eulogies. I am simply pointing out the facts--facts of supreme importance, but which from their very obviousness have been too easily lost sight of.

But it is just to remark in this connection, that the framers of our Constitution did not blindly, heedlessly, and mechanically copy the English models. Every principle was submitted to the test of severe and analytical argument, every plank that entered into the construction of the Ship of State was thoroughly examined and shown to be sound before it was put into its appropriate place. As the artists and architects model from the works of Angelo and Raphael so the men who fashioned our organic law intelligently studied, assimilated, and applied the principles of the English Constitution to our own government. They showed an artistic, profound, and delicate exercise of judgment, an almost divine perception of the purposes and necessities of the people in the selection of the materials for the laws of the country. These necessities were found to be fully provided for in the legal archives of the old government, which we were simply expanding.

In a few instances we did not adopt their laws.

For example, in the rule applicable to the descent of real property, the Americans struck out the doctrine of primogeniture, but substantially adopted the entire body of English law appertaining to real estate. The law forms; the procedure; the principles applicable to the rights of persons and things; criminal law, equity jurisprudence, {137} were taken _en bloc_, with exceptions too trifling to be mentioned.

The rules, principles, and forms of English jurisprudence were so fitted to the spirit and genius of our people, that (with but several trifling exceptions, such as a few small treatises on Justices' Courts and Sheriffs), after the adoption of our Constitution, there was not a single elementary treatise of American Law published in the United States until 1826--at which time Kent's _Commentaries_ made its appearance, and it is remarkable that, as legal science has advanced in this country, the prejudices of its professors have softened towards the country from which its materials have been chiefly drawn.

VII.--THE SAME TENDENCY AND METHODS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND WORSHIP

In both the British Empire and the United States, there is an official, and an almost universal, recognition of a superhuman power to whom allegiance and service are regarded as justly due. This is religion in a broad, comprehensive sense.

In each nation we find instances of cruel and unjustifiable religious intolerance and persecution; but the tendency has always been towards liberality and religious freedom.

In no other nation upon the globe does religion flourish in all its forms and sects as in these countries.

Without agreement or imitation, we find the {138} march of religious freedom keeping about the same pace in each nation.

What does this prove? The same religious impulses, thoughts, freedom, education, and growth; a family physically disunited, with one religious conception moulding their convictions in the same groove of thought. In England and the United States, for example, the Catholic religion flourishes and expands even more than in those countries where it is the established and official worship! Every branch of Protestantism is encouraged and grows in this congenial soil of English liberty. Religious independence and toleration are conspicuously planted in the heart of every true Anglo-Saxon. We can point with pride, on the one hand, to the toleration of rationalistic views upon religious subjects; and, on the other, to the growth and expansion of Christianity, and their joint influence upon our progress and civilisation.

Anglo-Saxon unity, strength, and progress owe, perhaps, as much to Christianity in all its forms, as to any other cause. It ought to be one of the most potent influences towards the unification of the Anglo-Saxon people. No nobler topic can occupy the attention of the pulpit.

VIII.--INTERMARRIAGES

Following the growth of other influences is intermarriage. Every day it becomes more frequent. It is not difficult for the individuals of the one country to become members of the homes of the other, and, as the Atlantic now only affords {139} the opportunity of a pleasant excursion, whatever there was of physical isolation in the past has almost disappeared. Female influence is here seen performing its salutary work to the best advantage in removing prejudice and harmonising opinions and manners. Such all-important instrumentalities act with a sort of geometrical aggregation, and constitute one of the surest means of making us all members of one great household.

IX.--OTHER SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE TWO NATIONS, EXHIBITING THE NATURAL FEATURES OF THE ALLIANCE, SUCH AS THE DRAMA, SPORTS, PASTIMES, HABITS OF LIVING

From all these sources there flow influences which increase the volume and strength of the movement towards unification.

Let us advert briefly to the drama. Besides its influence as literature, it forms, in its visual representation, no unimportant part in shaping the affinities of the two countries. What more potent influence can be conceived in this respect than the mighty Shakespeare? And so through the long list of his contemporaries and successors. Whatever has been seen on the stage becomes at once the common property of both peoples. The interchange so afforded of the varying types of the same manners and ideas--the very personalities of the performers--has been an agency no less certain than subtle in moulding the two peoples into one. And it may be noticed, in proof of this, how {140} instantly we detect the stamp of foreign thought and manners, when any play that is _not English_ is represented.

Why should I dwell upon this phase of the subject? Simply to show that, do what we may, we cannot unfamiliarise ourselves--we cannot escape from our natural tendencies. Suppose it were suggested that the United States should establish a common and perpetual relation with some foreign nation other than England? Could we invoke any of these natural elements of sympathy and bonds of relationship to support the movement? Suppose it were proposed to consolidate France and England? Or France and the United States? Or Russia and England? Or the United States and Russia? Is it not evident, at least at this stage of their development, that the union or coalition would be unnatural? In sports, pastimes, drama, habits of living, how utterly irreconcilable are the Russians and English? In all phases of their individual and national life, in their moral, political, and religious education and sentiments, there are constantly cropping out all kinds of diversities and incongruities. Oil and water will not commingle.

X.--RÉSUMÉ

Finally, to sum up and put these thoughts together; to aggregate the _natural_ elements which would render a national marriage between the United States and England justifiable, healthful, and prosperous, we find that we are of the same {141} family; we speak the same language; we have the same literature; we are governed substantially by the same political institutions; we possess similar laws, customs, and general modes of legal procedure; we follow the same tendency and methods of religious thought and practice; we have numerous inter-marriages and innumerable similarities in our sports, pastimes, drama, and habits of living--a natural community in everything important.

Pursue the English and Americans into their homes, into their churches, into their courts, and political institutions; into their business and commercial lives; into their theatres, amusements, and pastimes, we shall discover that we all "live, move, and have our being" according to the same general principles and methods of thought.

Are not the foundations of an international relation, when made of such materials, solid and secure? Is not a tree planted in such congenial soil sure to grow and bear noble fruit?

[1] Vol. i., Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, p. 256.

[2] De Tocqueville, _Democracy in America_, p. 33.

[3] Grote's _Greece_, vol. ii., pp. 319 and 320 _et seq._

[4] _Race and Language_, p. 106.

[5] _Herodotus_, book viii., chap. cxliii. (Rawlinson).

[6] _Herodotus_, book viii., chap. cxliv. (Rawlinson).

[7] Read in this connection the address of Lord Brougham, when elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, delivered April 9. 1825.

[8] Speech at Oxford, _Works_, vol. i., p. 438.

[9] "England," says Mr. Carlyle, "before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English; in America, in New Holland, east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a _Saxondom_ covering great spaces of the globe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in brother-like intercourse, helping one-another? . . . Yes, this Shakspeare is ours; we produce him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and one kind with him. The most common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that."

[10] Green's _History of the English People_, vol. i., p. 91.

[11] Green's _History of the English People_, vol. i., p. 91.

[12] _Ibid_.

[13] Reeves's _History of the English Law_, by Finlason, p. 230. Green's _English People_, vol. i., p. 116.

[14] Green's _English People_, vol. i., p. 244,

[15] Hume's _History of England_, vol. i., pp. 549-550.

[16] Freeman's _History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy_, 2nd Edition, p. 249.

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