The Beginnings of New England - Fiske John

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and eastern frontiers, all the way from the Rhine to the Euphrates. Do what it would, the government must become more and more a military despotism, must revert toward the Oriental type. The period extending from the third century before Christ to the third century after was a period of extraordinary intellectual expansion and moral awakening; but when we observe the governmental changes introduced under the emperor Diocletian at the very end of this period, we realize how serious had been the political retrogression, how grave the danger that the stream of human life might come to stagnate in Europe, as it had long since stagnated in Asia.

      Two mighty agents, cooperating in their opposite ways to prevent any such disaster, were already entering upon the scene. The first was the colonization of the empire by Germanic tribes already far advanced beyond savagery, already somewhat tinctured with Roman civilization, yet at the same time endowed with an intense spirit of personal and local independence. With this wholesome spirit they were about to refresh and revivify the empire, but at the risk of undoing its work of political organization and reducing it to barbarism. The second was the establishment of the Roman church, an institution capable of holding European society together in spite of a political disintegration that was widespread and long-continued. While wave after wave of Germanic colonization poured over romanized Europe, breaking down old boundary-lines and working sudden and astonishing changes on the map, setting up in every quarter baronies, dukedoms, and kingdoms fermenting with vigorous political life; while for twenty generations this salutary but wild and dangerous work was going on, there was never a moment when the imperial sway of Rome was quite set aside and forgotten, there was never a time when union of some sort was not maintained through the dominion which the church had established over the European mind. When we duly consider this great fact in its relations to what went before and what came after, it is hard to find words fit to express the debt of gratitude which modern civilization owes to the Roman Catholic church. When we think of all the work, big with promise of the future, that went on in those centuries which modern writers in their ignorance used once to set apart and stigmatize as the "Dark Ages"; when we consider how the seeds of what is noblest in modern life were then painfully sown upon the soil which imperial Rome had prepared; when we think of the various work of a Gregory, a Benedict, a Boniface, an Alfred, a Charlemagne; we feel that there is a sense in which the most brilliant achievements of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these. Until quite lately, indeed, the student of history has had his attention too narrowly confined to the ages that have been preeminent for literature and art—the so-called classical ages—and thus his sense of historical perspective has been impaired. When Mr. Freeman uses Gregory of Tours as a text-book, he shows that he realizes how an epoch may be none the less portentous though it has not had a Tacitus to describe it, and certainly no part of history is more full of human interest than the troubled period in which the powerful streams of Teutonic life pouring into Roman Europe were curbed in their destructiveness and guided to noble ends by the Catholic church. Out of the interaction between these two mighty agents has come the political system of the modern world. The moment when this interaction might have seemed on the point of reaching a complete and harmonious result was the glorious thirteenth century, the culminating moment of the Holy Roman Empire. Then, as in the times of Caesar or Trajan, there might have seemed to be a union among civilized men, in which the separate life of individuals and localities was not submerged. In that golden age alike of feudal system, of empire, and of church, there were to be seen the greatest monarchs, in fullest sympathy with their peoples, that Christendom has known—an Edward I., a St. Louis, a Frederick II. Then when in the pontificates of Innocent III. and his successors the Roman church reached its apogee, the religious yearnings of men sought expression in the sublimest architecture the world has seen. Then Aquinas summed up in his profound speculations the substance of Catholic theology, and while the morning twilight of modern science might be discerned in the treatises of Roger Bacon, while wandering minstrelsy revealed the treasures of modern speech, soon to be wrought under the hands of Dante and Chaucer into forms of exquisite beauty, the sacred fervour of the apostolic ages found itself renewed in the tender and mystic piety of St. Francis of Assisi. It was a wonderful time, but after all less memorable as the culmination of mediaeval empire and mediaeval church than as the dawning of the new era in which we live to-day, and in which the development of human society proceeds in accordance with more potent methods than those devised by the genius of pagan or Christian Rome. [[Sidenote: The German invaders and the Roman church] [[Sidenote: The wonderful thirteenth century]

      For the origin of these more potent methods we must look back to the early ages of the Teutonic people; for their development and application on a grand scale we must look chiefly to the history of that most Teutonic of peoples in its institutions, though perhaps not more than half-Teutonic in blood, the English, with their descendants in the New World. The third method of nation-making may be called the Teutonic or preeminently the English method. It differs from the Oriental and Roman methods which we have been considering in a feature of most profound significance; it contains the principle of representation. For this reason, though like all nation-making it was in its early stages attended with war and conquest, it nevertheless does not necessarily require war and conquest in order to be put into operation. Of the other two methods war was an essential part. In the typical Oriental nation, such as Assyria or Persia, we see a conquering tribe holding down a number of vanquished peoples, and treating them like slaves: here the nation is very imperfectly made, and its government is subject to sudden and violent changes. In the Roman empire we see a conquering people hold sway over a number of vanquished peoples, but instead of treating them like slaves, it gradually makes them its equals before the law; here the resulting political body is much more nearly a nation, and its government is much more stable. A Lydian of the fifth century before Christ felt no sense of allegiance to the Persian master who simply robbed and abused him; but the Gaul of the fifth century after Christ was proud of the name of Roman and ready to fight for the empire of which he was a citizen. We have seen, nevertheless, that for want of representation the Roman method failed when applied to an immense territory, and the government tended to become more and more despotic, to revert toward the Oriental type. Now of the English or Teutonic method, I say, war is not an essential part; for where representative government is once established, it is possible for a great nation to be formed by the peaceful coalescence of neighbouring states, or by their union into a federal body. An instance of the former was the coalescence of England and Scotland effected early in the eighteenth century after ages of mutual hostility; for instances of the latter we have Switzerland and the United States. Now federalism, though its rise and establishment may be incidentally accompanied by warfare, is nevertheless in spirit pacific. Conquest in the Oriental sense is quite incompatible with it; conquest in the Roman sense is hardly less so. At the close of our Civil War there were now and then zealous people to be found who thought that the southern states ought to be treated as conquered territory, governed by prefects sent from Washington, and held down by military force for a generation or so. Let us hope that there are few to-day who can fail to see that such a course would have been fraught with almost as much danger as the secession movement itself. At least it would have been a hasty confession, quite uncalled for and quite untrue, that American federalism had thus far proved itself incompetent—that we had indeed preserved our national unity, but only at the frightful cost of sinking to a lower plane of national life. [[Sidenote: The English method of nation-making] [[Sidenote: Pacific tendencies of federalism]

      But federalism, with its pacific implications, was not an invention of the Teutonic mind. The idea was familiar to the city communities of ancient Greece, which, along with their intense love of self-government, felt the need of combined action for warding off external attack. In their Achaian and Aitolian leagues the Greeks made brilliant attempts toward founding a nation upon some higher principle than that of mere conquest, and the history of these attempts is exceedingly interesting and instructive. They failed for lack of the principle of representation, which was practically unknown to the world until introduced by the Teutonic colonizers of the Roman empire. Until the idea of power delegated by the people had become familiar to men's minds in its practical bearings, it was impossible to create a great nation without crushing out the political life in some of its parts. Some centre of power was sure to absorb all the political life, and grow at the expense of the outlying parts, until the result was a centralized despotism. Hence it came to be one of the commonplace assumptions of political writers that republics must be small, that free government is practicable only

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