← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · triskelion
Thread ID: 8637 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-07-31
2003-07-31 21:24 | User Profile
The Saxon And The Norman Principles Of Government
From the book; The History of the Union, and of the Constitution. 1863, by C. Chauncey Burr.
ââ¬ÅWhen we come to investigate the origin of the principles of our Government, we must go a great ways back of our colonial period.
We must go even behind those long unknown and, except to a few scholars of history, forgotten discoveries of the Scandinavian navigators, who, five hundred years before Columbus, were the first to behold these Western shores.
These principles of government were not invented during our colonial period. Nor were they during our revolutionary, nor our constitutional period. They were not invented at all. They grew up gradually as a tree grows which has its roots in far-off centuries.
Principles which hold up the weight of states and kingdoms are not inventions. They are growths, good or bad, out of time and circumstances.ââ¬Â
It was Seneca's counsel to his friend Lucilius that when he went before the public he should imagine Cato or Scipio to be present.
I approach this subject with as cautious a respect for the truth of history as though the spirits of the wise and heroic founders of this Government were present in this audience to listen to all I say. My subject does not discuss the events of the present unhappy hour. It does not look to the future.
It turns our faces backwards to the past. It carries us to the places where our fathers stood.
Above the graves of those who founded the republic let us seek to discover the vital, animating principle of government which guided them through the fierce and bloody period of the Revolution, and through the civil conflicts that followed, until their noble work was done, and they rejoiced in the conviction that they had reared a temple of liberty which the hand of time should not destroy.
There is something inexpressibly solemn in this investigation which we commence to-night.
To sit face to face with the venerable dead-to listen again to the voices of their wisdom out of the imperishable words they have left behind-this is a thought that holds our hearts still, and almost stops our breath. Is this a place for politicians to wrangle over? Will you bring here your loads of hate-of partisan lust and revenge, and throw them down on the silent bosoms of your fathers?
No! Patiently, reverently let us find out their footsteps, and nobly resolve that we will forsake them nevermore.
The man that does not love his country, turns his back upon himself.
Our country is ourselves; for we are all parts of the public system which constitutes the grand edifice of our social and political lives.
The man who even dies for his country, dies for himself, for his children, and for the honor of his forefathers.
It is a family interest that connects him with the glory of his country.
What are a few days added to a man's life, compared to the progressive perpetuity of those institutions which are to be the abode of all the descending generations of his offspring? Only as a minute compared to a thousand years.
It is of little moment whether you and I go hence to-day or to-morrow. Every act of ours that bears upon our country's weal or wo is something infinitely greater than our life.
When we come to investigate the origin of the principles of our Government, we must go a great ways back of our colonial period.
We must go even behind those long unknown and, except to a few scholars of history, forgotten discoveries of the Scandinavian navigators, who, five hundred years before Columbus, were the first to behold these Western shores.
These principles of government were not invented during our colonial period. Nor were they during our revolutionary, nor our constitutional period. They were not invented at all. They grew up gradually as a tree grows which has its roots in far-off centuries.
Principles which hold up the weight of states and kingdoms are not inventions. They are growths, good or bad, out of time and circumstances.
One layer of time has Providence piled upon another for immemorial ages, every one of which is essential to the integrity of the whole system.
We who live now stand upon the topmost layer; but remove the one beneath us, and we must go down. Remove the lowest strata of all, and the whole pile would tumble in ruins.
Had Greece been different from what it is, Rome would not have been what she was.
Had Rome been different, Saxony and Normandy would not have been what they were.
Had these been different, England would not be what she is.
Had England been different, we should not be what we are-we should not be here to-night.
We are all parts of one stupendous whole, and are making future generations, just as past generations have made us.
Our fathers transmitted a priceless boon of government to us; and, by an eternal law of Providence, we must send it down to our posterity, a boon or a bane.
As we act to-day, must our children curse or bless our memories.
As we act to-day, shall we transmit to the generations of our offspring the sacred principles of self-government and liberty, or those of anarchy and despotism.
The blood of our fathers was poured out like rain in defense of those principles. And not only of our fathers, but of hundreds of thousands of Saxons in England, even before the time of feudalism.
For old England, under her Saxon kings, was a kingly confederacy.
That was the old Saxon idea of liberty, that the people should somehow rule. In their institutions the name of "PEOPLE" was never lost, whether in their furtherest antiquity among the forests of Germany, or on the ancient plains of Britainy.
Our fathers, when they began the business of governing themselves, but expanded what the Saxons commenced more than a thousand years ago; before, indeed, the races of the North of Europe had a history of their own, or a place in the history of the more civilized Southern nations.
And these Anglo-Saxons waded through hundreds of years of blood in noble resistance to the centralizing despotism of the Norman sovereigns.
More than a thousand years ago this battle between the ideas of local self-government and of centralized despotism crimsoned every field in Britainy.
The principle of local independence was the Saxon idea. That of centralization, or of all power proceeding from a great and irresponsible center, was the Norman idea. Hence, "when the Saxons conquered Britain, its comparatively small territory was divided into several petty kingdoms or loosely-compacted commonwealths. And again, each of these was parceled out into various other divisions, such as counties, shires, tithings, and other partitions, the origin of which puzzles the antiquarian."
This old Saxon spirit of state independence animated the local institutions and all the small divisions with an energy and general prosperity that never could have been developed under a strongly-controlling central power.
Under the Saxon principle, the masses of the people flourish. They are free, and, therefore, the arbiters of their own destiny. Their very freedom imparts an ambition and an enterprise, which are never seen where the Norman principle of centralized power prevails.
We see this illustrated in the Saxon and Norman periods of English history. When the Norman conqueror subjugated England, and his arms were everywhere victorious, he had a still greater difficulty to encounter in forcing his centralized system upon the necks of those who had been long accustomed to the liberty of local independence.
This struggle was to blot out all those numerous state, county, and shire lines, within which the poorest man found some guarantee of justice, liberty, and prosperity.
Submissive uniformity is the first demand of a tyrant. Every man within the range of his authority must be reduced to his own habits of thinking and ways of living.
William, the Norman conqueror of England, began the business of crushing out the local free institutions of the country, by introducing, for the administration of justice, an office unknown to the Saxon-the office of "Chief-Justiciar," as he was called.
On this subject the biographer of the English chief-justices says: "The office of Chief-Justice, or Chief-Justiciar, was introduced into England by William the Conqueror from Normandy, where it had long existed. The functions of such an officer ill accorded with the notions of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, who had a great antipathy to centralization, and prided themselves upon enjoying the rights and the advantages of self-government."
The Norman principle of an all-controlling centralized power is incompatible with the freedom and prosperity of the masses. And yet we hear well-meaning people of the present time, with astonishing blindness, declare that they "are tired of living in a STATE-they want to live in a COUNTRY." They want a stronger central government, than this one built upon the principle of local or state independence by our forefathers. Alas! they have not counted the cost. They have not studied that painfulest period of history, in which this very thing they now sigh for transpired in England, when local self-government, intrenched in Saxon love of liberty, was all crushed out by the victorious Norman centralizing despotism.
The result of the triumph of this Norman principle was the establishment of unheard of despotism in England, which you all know reduced the masses to a state of villienage, serfdom, or slavery.
William the Conqueror ruled them with a rod of iron. "He disposed as absolutely of the lives and fortunes of his conquered subjects as any Eastern monarch. He forbid them on pain of death both fire and candles in their houses after eight o'clock. Whether he did this to prevent them from meeting by night to discuss their wrongs, or only to try, by this odd and whimsical prohibition, how far it was possible for one man to extend his power over his fellow-creatures, it is impossible to tell."
But this we know, that the centralized consolidated power of the government was too strong, too high, and too far off to be reached by the people, and they were all crushed together beneath an unrelenting despotism.
But for all this, Saxonism in England, though cast down, was not destroyed. The love of independence, of local self-government, was so much a part of the Anglo-Saxon mind, that even the weight of centralized Normanism could never crush it out.
And, to this day, this Saxon characteristic is seen in England, not only in the number, but also in the diversity of local institutions. It has been truly said that no country on earth presents so great a variety of customs and local usages as England. "Habits, manners-the tenure of land, rules of inheritance, displays of free variety in local institutions, are there, to this day, strongly contrasted with the servile uniformity which Norman tyranny everywhere seeks to establish. Usages and customs which appertain to the North of England are totally unknown in the South. The men of Kent, or of Cornwall, or of Wales, bear slight resemblance to each other."
The cities and towns of England thus have a variety of municipal power and privilege, resting on authority of "immemorial usage," which the Crown cannot and dare not meddle with.
Voltaire says: "The English are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power of their kings by resisting them."
The English history of the Habeas Corpus fully justifies this remark of the French historian.
As long ago as 1215 the British Barons assembled in arms at Runnymede, on the banks of the Thames, and compelled their tyrant, King John, to grant the great charter of the liberties of England, the forty-fifth section of which declared that "no freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, or in any way injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, and by the laws of the land."
The same Magna Charta declares that "by the law, both the king and all his subjects shall be ruled."
The last chapter of this immortal charter provides that if the king, or any one acting in his name, shall do anything by which the laws shall be disregarded, "it shall be held of no force or effect."
During the six centuries and a half that have elapsed since that day, no English king has dared to violate the habeas corpus then wrung from the throne by the Saxon love of liberty.
In all the revolutions through which the English monarchy has passed-amidst all the convulsions of its dynastic changes, its civil conflicts and foreign wars, the people of England have never been seduced nor driven from the preservation of that time-honored monument of their liberties.
Although the right of habeas corpus was declared three hundred years before the discovery of America, it has found its way into almost every authoritative declaration of human rights that has been drafted in the English language since.
Made in 1215, it was confirmed in 1297 by King Edward the First. It was guaranteed by the Statute of Treasons in 1350, in the reign of Edward the Third.
It was reaffirmed in 1627 by the Petition of Rights in the third year of Charles the First, and was defined and reaffirmed by the great Habeas Corpus Act of 1672, in the thirty-first year of Charles the Second; and again reasserted in the Bill of Rights in 1689, when William and Mary were called to the British throne, made vacant by the forced abdication of James the Second, who lost his crown by attempting to suspend the habeas corpus, and to subvert the liberties of the people.
From that time to the present no occupant of the British throne has dared to suspend this great right-this immortal monument of Saxon liberty.
There are also in England, at the present day, many other monuments of the old Saxon love of liberty which the throne must not meddle with.
The local independence, the municipal rights of the counties and cities, are beyond the reach of the crown, and the crown dare not interfere with them.
This fact is happily illustrated in a ceremony which takes place in London every time a new monarch succeeds to the throne. The royal procession approaches the city to pass through the old gate of Temple Bar. The gate is locked. A member of the royal party raps for entrance. The mayor of the city, who is stationed upon the inside, inquires "Who is there?" The reply is, "His Majesty the King wishes to pass this gate." The mayor then steps forth, and presents the great key of the gate, which signifies that it is by the permission of the people of London that even the king is allowed to pass.
I was in England just after the legislature of the State of New York struck down the municipal rights of the city by taking from it the appointment and control of its own police; and I witnessed the unbounded astonishment of the people of Great Britain that the people of the city of New York submitted so readily to this kind of Norman despotism.
It was often said in my hearing, that if the Queen of England were to attempt such an interference with the municipal rights of the cities, it would cost her her throne.
We have no doubt it would. King James the Second was forced to abdicate for a scarcely less trespass upon the domain of local popular rights.
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 independent 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," be 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 self-government-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 now 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 salutary neglect a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection."
But it was to the difficult and the expense of reaching us that we chiefly owe this "wise and salutary neglect."
The moment that the growing wealth and power of these colonies tempted the cupidity of the British throne, there was nothing more to be seen of that "wise and salutary neglect."
Taxation, without representation, came quick enough as soon as there was anything here to tax.
But in the meantime Saxonism, or localism, had made such headway, that when Normanism or centralism did come, it was too late. The horse would not carry its rider.
That Saxon love of freedom, which had dissolved the union between the head and shoulders of more than one British king, had got under such headway here, that it defiantly waded through eight years of blood and battle to dissolve the union between the British throne and these colonies.
But I anticipate. There is a mid-region, between the settlement and the independence of these colonies, which must be looked into before we can judge rightly of the nature of those institutions which were founded by our fathers of the constitutional period of our history.
The first thing that strikes us, as we look into this mid-region between colonization and independence, is the perfect original independence of all the colonies, of each other.
There was, in the beginning, not only no union, but there was the greatest diversity between them.
They had not even all the same form of government.
1st. "There was what may be called the Charter Government; in which the legislative power was vested in a governor, council, and assembly.
Such were the governments of Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Plymouth Colony, and originally of Massachusetts.
2d. There was the Proprietary Government, in which the proprietor of the Province was governor, the assembly being chosen by the people.
Such were the governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland, and at first of New Jersey and the Carolinas.
3d. There was also what may be termed the Royal Government, in which the governor and council were appointed by the crown, the assembly being elected by the people.
Such were the governments of New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Georgia, and of New Jersey after 1702, and of the Carolinas after 1728.
4th. There was the Mixed Government, in which the governor only was appointed by the king, while the assembly and the council were elected by the people.
This was the form adopted permanently by the "Massachusetts Colony."
This variety in the constitutional forms of the colonial governments points out their territorial separation and their constitutional independence of each other.
Their constitutional independence of each other was as complete as that which exists between France and Spain at the present time. Indeed, these two nations have far more intercommunication than the colonies had with each other previous to the revolutionary period.
At first there were but two territorial divisions-known by the names Virginia and New England.
At last these became divided into thirteen distinct political communities, which, as we have seen, were entirely independent of each other.
There was neither a community of interest nor of feeling between them.
They were strangers to each other.
There was no trade between them, which must probably be accounted for in part by the policy of Great Britain, which placed restrictions on the commerce and manufactures of the colonies.
It must also have accorded with the feelings of the colonists.
"Old England" they still regarded with affection. "New England was nothing to Virginia, and Virginia was nothing to New England."
"Old England" they fondly spoke of as "home"-as the "mother-country"; but they never alluded to the colonies as brothers and sisters.
We search almost in vain for any traces of any kind of intercourse between them, at the early date of which we are now speaking.
"In 1756, Washington traveled eastward as far as Boston, and the year following he visited Philadelphia-but the object of both these visits was connected with the old French war-the first, for a personal interview with the commander-in-chief, Governor Shirley, and the second to attend a convention of governors and offices summoned by Lord Loudoun."
These, I believe, are the only times that Washington visited the Northern or Middle provinces, until the beginning of the Revolution.
In 1773, Mr. Quincy, of Boston, paid a visit to the Middle and Southern provinces, and, writing home from Charleston, he speaks of "this distant shore."
Just before the breaking out of the Revolution; two Philadelphia patriots-John Dickinson and Joseph Ross-visited Boston.
These are the only instances I remember of any communication between the colonists until the beginning of the Revolution.
When the first general Congress assembled in 1774, the members all met as "strangers."
I have dwelt somewhat upon this point, because we shall find, in the sequel, that it had an important bearing upon the character of the government which was at last established by a union of all these colonies.
We shall see that the principles which at last became fixed in the glorious constitution of our country were simply expansions of the ideas of local independence which the Saxons brought into England in the fifth century, and which came over here with our forefathers, and inspired them with the mighty will that carried them through the bloody period of the Revolution.
We shall see that every one of the colonies was as jealous of losing this principle as of losing its life.
Our ancestors countenanced many whimsical tyrannies that strike us now with grotesque amazement; but they were always clear on this one point,-they would have their own way. They would make their own local laws, and have supreme control over all their domestic institutions; and it was never a safe business of any one dwelling outside of their local jurisdiction to meddle with them.
There was no authority recognized, except that of Heaven, in their local government, but the voice of their own people.
We have an excellent illustration of this in the laws which were made in what was called "the dominion of New Haven," at its first settlement-of which the following are examples:
"The governor and magistrates, convened in General Assembly, are the Supreme Power, under God, of this independent dominion."
"The Governor is amenable to the voice of the people."
The Governor shall have a single vote in determining any question, except a casting vote, when the Assembly shall be equally divided. The assembly of the people shall not be dismissed by the Governor, but shall dismiss itself."
"Whosoever says there is a power over and above this dominion, shall be punished with death and loss of property."
But, although these colonists were clear enough on the subject of local sovereignty, they knew how to be despots in their own little way.
For instance, what do our young gentlemen think of the following law:
"No man shall court a maid in person, or by letter, without first obtaining consent of her parents: five pounds penalty for the first offence, tell pounds for the second; and for the third, imprisonment during the pleasure of the Court."
And what do married people think of this law ? "Married people shall live together, or be imprisoned."
But if the New England colonists knew how to be cruel to the members of their own community, they were clear enough and invincible enough on this principle of being sole masters of their own domestic institutions. They would punish any man with death who should dare even to intimate that they were not.
And, although the other colonies were not possessed of the same grotesque and intolerant bigotry as those of New England, they were not the less jealous of the principle of local independence.
Botta, the distinguished Italian, who wrote the first impartial history of our War of Independence, says: "As to the provinces of the South, the land there being more fertile, and the colonists consequently enjoying greater affluence, they could pretend to a more ample liberty, and discover less animosity for opinions which differed from their own. Nor should it be imagined that the happy fate they enjoyed, had enervated their minds or impaired their courage. Living continually on their own plantations, far from the luxury and seduction of cities, frugal and moderate in all their desires, it is certain, on the contrary, that the great abundance of things necessary to life rendered their bodies more vigorous, and their minds more impatient of all subjection. In these provinces, also, the slavery of the blacks, which was in use, seemed-however strange the assertion-to have increased the love of liberty among the white population. This influence they considered not merely as a right, but as a franchise and privilege. They considered the pretensions of the British Government as tending to reduce them to a state little different from that of their own negro slaves."
Another thing that led to the greater love of the principle of local independence among most of the colonies, was a perpetual fresh recurrence to the causes which had led to the planting of their destinies upon these shores.
If it was a love of liberty, and an abhorrence of the privations they suffered on account of it, that brought them to these shores, how should the ardor of exasperated minds have been appeased in these vast solitudes, where the amusements of Europe were unknown-where assiduity in manual toils must have hardened their bodies, and increased the asperity of their characters.
If, in England, they had shown themselves adverse to the dictation of centralized power, how should their opinions have been changed here, where scarcely a vestige was seen of the royal authority and splendor? Many of them had encountered exile, at the epoch when the war waged most fiercely in their native country between the king and the people-at the epoch when the armed subjects contended for the right of resisting the will of the prince when he usurps their liberties.
The colonists had suffered for these principles in the old country, and how should they forget them in the new?
They were not only, for the most part, Protestants, but they were protestants against protestantism.
They were dissenters to all kinds of authority, ecclesiastical or civil, which was not the election of their own free and independent choice.
This spirit grew up with their growth, and strengthened with their strength on this continent, from the time of their landing up to the very period of the Constitution. The circumstances that surrounded them were most favorable to the growth of this feeling of perfect independence, and of impatience at every thing that partook of the character of centralized coercive restraint.
From the vast extent of the territory occupied, and the abundance of vacant lands, every colonist was, or might have become, at the same time, a proprietor, a farmer, and a laborer.
Finding all his enjoyments in rural life, he saw spring up, grow, prosper, and arrive at maturity, under his own eyes, and often by his own hands, all things necessary for the life of man.
He was the monarch of all he surveyed. He felt himself free from all subjection, from all dependence. And individual liberty is a most powerful incentive to civil independence.
He was a true lord. He might hunt, fowl, and fish whenever he pleased. There were no poacher laws to restrain his will. His parks, and pleasure grounds, and reservoirs were boundless forests, vast and numerous lakes and rivers, and the sea unrestricted and inexhaustible in fish of every species. How could this man feel himself otherwise than a lord of the soil, as free as the winds and the eagles that flew above him? How could he feel otherwise than free? Independence was as much a part of the emotions and passions of his bosom, as of his unrestricted footsteps among the unfenced hills and vallies of the boundless continent around him.
The eagle that soared from peak to peak over all this wilderness realm, was not more free.
And it was with something more than a metaphor, that our forefathers adopted the eagle as the fitting emblem of American Liberty.
They regarded this proud native of these forests with as sacred, and almost as superstitious a reverence, as William Tell, the immortal hero of Switzerland, who, in Sheridan Knowles' inimitable drama of his name, is made to say: -
"Scaling yonder peak, I saw in eagle wheeling near its brow; O'er the abyss, his broad-expanded wings Lay calm and motionless upon the air, As if he floated there without their aid, By the sole act of his unlorded will, That buoy'd him proudly up. Instinctively I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still His airy circle, as in the delight Of measuring the ample range beneath, And round about-absorbed, he heeded not The death that threaten'd him. I could not shoot. 'Twas liberty. I turned my bow aside, And let him soar away.
The land was free! O! with what pride I used To walk these hills, and look up to my God, And bless him that it was so. It was free- From end to end, from cliff to lake, 'twas free! Free as our torrents are that leap our rocks, And plough our vallies, without asking leave: Or, as our peaks, that rear their caps of snow, In very presence of the regal sun! In my boat at night, when midway o'er the lake, The stars went out, and down the mountain gore, The wind came roaring! I have sat and eyed The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head, And think I had no master, save his own! I have thought of other lands, whose storms Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just Have wished me there-the thought that mine was free Has check'd that wish, and I have raised my head, And cried in thraldom to that furious wind, Blow on! This is the land of liberty!"
Such were the freedom-inspiring surroundings of our forefathers, who laid the foundations of civil liberty, and of local independence on this continent. The cradle of liberty was here rocked by the untrammeled winds of heaven.
Man's soul was made free by ten thousand proclamations issued by the voice of Nature and Providence, which spoke by the authority of charters older than the records of human governments, and diviner than the statutes of legislative enactments.
Every man's bosom was a kingdom! Every man's soul was a king! Vast forests, hills, vallies, rivers, lakes, fields, were his subjects.
He commanded them, and they obeyed. Each in its turn paid tribute to his wants, and in due time poured wealth and plenty into his lap.
Here he grew in greatness and power, becoming progressively more free and independent, as he subjugated the continent to his will, until at length the institutions of government grew under his hand into a temple of liberty that commanded the wonder and admiration of the world.
That was the Union!
From the book; The History of the Union, and of the Constitution. 1863, by C. Chauncey Burr.
2003-08-04 02:17 | User Profile
Triskelion - an interesting post. I came across a more up-to-date and slightly less florid account in a recent issue of BBC History Magazine. Unfortunately I neglected to scan the article before discarding the magazine. If it comes to hand again I will post it unless another member can help in the meantime.
I do, however, think it slightly over-egging the pudding to hold, as Burr does, that England at the time of the Norman Conquest was a loose confederation of "...several petty kingdoms or loosely-compacted commonwealths."
For close to 200 years leading up to 1066, there existed a unified English kingdom with common laws, currency, religion and, for the most part, language.
So, there was in a practical sense, a centralized state apparatus was already in place long before the Normans arrived. No question it was a more benign and lighter-touch regime than what followed, but in terms of central vs local balance it was probably not terribly different to the administrative structure that still exists in Britain today.
2003-08-04 16:36 | User Profile
Hello DD,
The work I cited is a bit florid but I feel accurate in any case. Clive La Pensee's second work on the matter supported the work cited above in a rather detailed fashion although such was not his original intention. As to Norman England being a lose confederation I would suggest to you that having a set of laws proclaimed to hold sway over all of a nation is very different then making it so and that Norman England like feudal nations was in practice highly decentralized. Religion is of course a bit differant as the Catholic church of the era had a rather extensive adminitrative structure and the wealth to influence to local government. If you are interested give me a few a days and i'll dig up some referances for you if your interested.