only an embarrassment or encumbrance. The doctor might as well attempt
to give an individual a new constitution, or the constitution of
another man, as the statesman to give a nation any other constitution
than that which it has, and with which it is born.

The whole history of Europe, since the fall of the Roman empire, proves
this thesis. The barbarian conquest of Rome introduced into the
nations founded on the site of the empire, a double constitution--the
barbaric and the civil--the Germanic and the Roman in the West, and the
Tartaric or Turkish and the Graeco-Roman in the East. The key to all
modern history is in the mutual struggles of these two constitutions
and the interests respectively associated with them, which created two
societies on the same territory, and, for the most part, under the same
national denomination. The barbaric was the constitution of the
conquerors; they had the power, the government, rank, wealth, and
fashion, were reinforced down to the tenth century by fresh hordes of
barbarians, and had even brought the external ecclesiastical society to
a very great extent into harmony with itself. The Pope became a feudal
sovereign, and the bishops and mitred abbots feudal princes and barons.
Yet, after eight hundred years of fierce struggle, the Roman
constitution got the upper hand, and the barbaric constitution, as far
as it could not be assimilated to the Roman, was eliminated. The
original Empire of the West is now as thoroughly Roman in its
constitution, its laws, and its civilization, as it ever was under any
of its Christian emperors before the barbarian conquest.

The same process is going on in the East, though it has not advanced so
far, having begun there several centuries later, and the Graeco-Roman
constitution was far feebler there than in the West at the epoch of the
conquest. The Germanic tribes that conquered the West had long had
close relations with the empire, had served as its allies, and even in
its armies, and were partially Romanized. Most of their chiefs had
received a Roman culture; and their early conversion to the Christian
faith facilitated the revival and permanence of the old Roman
constitution. In the East it was different. The conquerors had no
touch of Roman civilization, and, followers of the Prophet, they were
animated with an intense hatred, which, after the conquest, was changed
into a superb contempt, of Christians and Romans. They had their civil
c