quality gave him, came to dominate the other races which invaded or
settled in Britain and finally worked his way up to and through the
Norman crust which, as it were, overlay the country.

In England many institutions are of course Norman. An hereditary
aristocracy, the laws of primogeniture and entail--these are Norman. By
the help of them the Norman hoped to perpetuate his authority over the
Saxon herd; and failed. Magna Charta, Cromwell, the Roundheads, the
Puritans, the spirit of nonconformity, most of the limitations of the
power of the Throne, the industrial and commercial greatness of
Britain--these things are Anglo-Saxon. The American colonists (however
many individuals of Norman blood were among them) were Anglo-Saxon; they
came from the Anglo-Saxon body of the people and carried with them the
Anglo-Saxon spirit. They did not reproduce in their new environment an
hereditary aristocracy, a law of primogeniture or of entail. It is
probable that no single English colony to-day, if suddenly cut loose
from the Empire and left to fashion its form of society anew, would
reproduce any one of these things. In the United States the Anglo-Saxon
spirit went to work without Norman assistance or (as we choose to view
it) Norman encumbrances. The Anglo-Saxon spirit is still working in
England--never perhaps has its operation been more powerfully visible
than in the trend of thought of the last few years. It is working also
in the United States; but, because it there works independently of
Norman traditions, it works faster.

In many things--in almost everything, as we shall see--the two peoples
are progressing along precisely the same path, a path other than that
which other nations are treading. In many things--in almost
everything--the United States moves the more rapidly. It seems at first
a contradiction in terms to say that the Americans are an English people
and then to show that in many individual matters the English people is
approximating to American models. It is in truth no contradiction; and
the explanation is obvious. Both are impelled by the same spirit, the
same motives, the same ambitions; but in England that spirit, those
motives and ambitions work against greater resistance.

What looks at first like a peculiar departure on the part of the
American people will again and again, on investigation, be found to be
only the English spirit shooting ahead faster than it can advance in
England. When, in a particu