ength to that
of freedom. State and Church alike had frowned upon them; and their
strong reaction was a reaction of their entire nature, alike of the
spiritual and the secular man. All that was democratic in the policy of
England, and all that was Protestant in her religion, they carried with
them, in pronounced and exclusive forms, to a soil and a scene
singularly suited for their growth.

It is to the honor of the British Monarchy that, upon the whole, it
frankly recognized the facts, and did not pedantically endeavor to
constrain by artificial and alien limitations the growth of the infant
states. It is a thing to be remembered that the accusations of the
colonies in 1776 were entirely levelled at the king actually on the
throne, and that a general acquittal was thus given by them to every
preceding reign. Their infancy had been upon the whole what their
manhood was to be, self-governed and republican. Their Revolution, as we
call it, was like ours in the main, a vindication of liberties inherited
and possessed. It was a Conservative revolution; and the happy result
was that, notwithstanding the sharpness of the collision with the
mother-country, and with domestic loyalism, the Thirteen Colonies made
provision for their future in conformity, as to all that determined
life and manners with the recollections of their past. The two
Constitutions of the two countries express indeed rather the differences
than the resemblances of the nations. The one is a thing grown, the
other a thing made; the one a _praxis_, the other a _poiesis_: the one
the offspring of tendency and indeterminate time, the other of choice
and of an epoch. But, as the British Constitution is the most subtle
organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of
progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so-far as I can
see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the
brain and purpose of man. It has had a century of trial, under the
pressure of exigencies caused by an expansion unexampled in point of
rapidity and range: and its exemption from formal change, though not
entire, has certainly proved the sagacity of the constructors, and the
stubborn strength of the fabric.

One whose life has been greatly absorbed in working, with others, the
institutions of his own country, has not had the opportunities necessary
for the careful and searching scrutiny of institutions elsewhere. I
should feel, in looking at t