which she did. The real weakness of the confederation was that the Union could not reach the individual colonists. They were not citizens of "The United Colonies of New England," which was the official style of the confederacy, but remained as before citizens of their own colony.

To us this first experiment in union is significant as indicating a marked trend of thought. Just as Hooker and his associates went forth from Massachusetts and settled in Connecticut without asking the permission of the English Government or obtaining a charter for their lands from colonial governor or higher authority, so the four colonies brought about their confederation without the authorization of the Crown or its ministers. In the articles of confederation only incidental reference is made to the home government. The preamble recites that "the Natives have formerly committed sondry insolences and outrages upon seueral Plantacons of the English and have of late combined against us. And seeing by reasons of those sad Distracons in England, which they have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered from that humble way of seekinge advise or reapeing those comfortable fruits of protection which at other tymes we might well expect."1 This is the sole allusion to a paramount authority. Yet it was really a defiance of England, for it was an arrogation of the right of the colonists to conduct their own political 1 Wilson: A History of the American People, vol. II, appendix, p. 331.

affairs and to form alliances without the consent of the Crown. It shows, what I have repeatedly urged as the lesson of colonial history, that the spirit of colonial independence manifested itself from the beginning, and that while the colonists always regarded themselves as Englishmen and acknowledged the suzerainty of England, they did not concede that their fealty robbed them of the right of creating their own political administration.

The weakness, the incapacity, and the shortsighted greed of the British Government, following the line of least resistance, allowed the colonists to make their own laws and practically to do as they wanted, so long as they did not interfere with England's control of commerce. This was the rotten link in the chain that was continually strained to the breaking-point and then suddenly relaxed when the strain became too great; it was this extraordinary control of their local affairs and the commercial tyranny of Britain that made a dissolution of the connection between the colonies and the parent state inevitable.1

It will perhaps be asked how it came about that the English in America were so different from the English in England and thus early developed new characteristics. Genetically they were not different, although they appeared to be. Man adapts himself to his social environment and develops his political milieu in the same way that animals adjust themselves to physical conditions. The cumulative effects of climate, the obstacles to be overcome, the quickening of the perceptions that necessity exercised, the constant spur to individual initiative made these English in America a more alert and self-reliant people than their kinsmen at home; faculties which had lain dormant in England were in America revitalized. What did Suffolk yeoman or Norfolk yokel know about going into the forest and swinging his axe so as to make a clearing and with his own hands building his own roof-tree; of trapping and hunting; of working with gun in hand, and by the sign of a broken branch or grass crushed down reading the presence of his enemies? Their forefathers had been brought in close contact with Nature, they had worked fearing attack, they in their day had the same qualities that were now being displayed in the American wilderness, but the generations that came in between had developed along other lines.1

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1 "In all Thomas Hardy's work," a recent reviewer of that novelist says, "there is something of the grave simplicity of places, like his Wessex, where man has lived long in close relationship to earth and the seasons. Most of his characters have grown to be what they are by slow and gradual changes, like the woods or the surface of the downs. They are deep-rooted in far-off traditions of the generations which have passed and left them there. Amid their drama of events we hear singularly little exclamation of joy or sorrow, and hardly any wailing or excessive grief. Little fuss is made over birth and death and the fortunes that may come between. The earth turns upon her ancient round, man appears upon her surface to run his course, and the eyes of the trilobite that died millions of years ago, stare from the rock into the eyes of the dying." - The Literary Digest, New York, September 9, 1905. There is no spirit of Wessex in America; there never has been. That growth

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Civilization, the complex fabric of society, specialization - for society less complex and less highly specialized at that day than it now is was still no chaotic jumble but refined and articulate done to the mind of man what it had done to his body, and in the brain there were rudimentary cells, as in the body there were rudimentary organs. In America Nature demanded certain things, and man responded or perished. A people who were to give birth to a new race had become inured to hardship and hardihood. They had assimilated the lesson of their enemies and practiced the craft and cunning of the Indian; had Braddock listened to the advice of Washington and followed Indian tactics, in all probability he would have won.

The independence of the English and their political genius distinguish them from other races. Out of it is their history wrought. In England at the time of which we are treating, social and political institutions had become formalized, and after each progressive movement society appeared to lapse into its original state. It appeared to, because society quickly absorbed the new conditions, but the structure was not changed, although the interior arrangements were modified. In America it was otherwise. Here the Englishman was given the opportunity to exercise his natural tendencies; not really to do anything new, but simply to repeat what had been done by his forefathers; his method of doing it was new, to meet the new conditions, but the substance was old. Englishmen in England in the seventeenth century, suffering under religious or political persecution, could not, as Hooker or Williams did, wander away a few miles, obtain land by squatter sovereignty or from the Indians for a few trinkets, and lay the foundation of a new state, because in England land was not free and political and social conditions made the creation of a new state impossible. But the Englishman does not submit to persecution or suffer without resistance. In him the spirit of defiance is never crushed. Forced to remain, he agitates; knowing what he wants, he is doggedly determined to gain it, and in the end he wins. We see Hooker go out from Massachusetts and Massachusetts make no attempt to stop him, because Massachusetts had no power of coercion, she was too weak to use force, and it was as well perhaps to be rid of such an objectionable person; at any rate, make a virtue of necessity and put as good a face upon it as possible. Two hundred years later we see South Carolina and her sister states attempt to leave their mother's house, and is the door thrown wide open to them and are they bid to depart in peace? Englishmen in America, then and for many years to come, called themselves Englishmen, and yet