AMERICAN LIBERTY AND CONSTITUTIONALISM.* A GREATER interest attaches to the
methods, spirit, and style of the writers of these two volumes than to any fresh facts they have discovered, or any original theories they propound. In his preface, indeed, Mr. Sterne admits that when he was asked to write a popular book on the Constitution of the United States, the first inquiry that occurred to him was "whether, in the mul- tiplicity of works on this, as on every other conceivable subject touching large popular interests, there is any room to say some- thing novel, or to put into a novel form the old matter which has been said and written over and over again by abler tongues and pens." If Mr. Scott does not say the same thing in the much more remarkable work which he has written, be implies as much in the abundant foot-notes which give his authorities for every statement he makes, from the historians and special pleaders of the hour, back to that eminent combination of the practical poli- tician and the theorist whom, with a quaint, cloister dignity, he persists in styling "Mr. Burke." Both works are original— and even then they are original only to a limited extent—in so far as they contemplate the history of the United States in its ante - Independence and post-Independence periods from the evolutionary stand-point. Mr. Sterne speaks of what he has done as "a sketch of the Constitution of the United States as it stands in text and as it is in- terpreted by the Supreme Court, accompanied by a history of the political controversies which resulted in the formation of and changes in that instrument, together with the presentation of the actual situation of political parties and questions, which, in their turn, may produce constitutional changes." In fact, as treated by Mr. Sterne, American constitutionalism is at once the result of past evolution and material for the evolution of the future. Mr. Scott does not, it is true, concern himself with the American history of the future, or even with the history of the Union, since its place as a nation was definitively recognised. But his essay is cast in almost ostentatiously Spencerian lines. It seeks to disclose the plan of development contained in. the history of colonial life in America. We are further told, in what is now the orthodox fashion, that there were three eras in that develop- ment, —the era of constitutional development in England ; the era of State development in America ; and the era of constitu- tional development in America. The " motives " of these eras are also revealed; that of the first being freedom of conscience, that of the second the development of tribal institutions, and that of the third, the longing for popular sovereignty. Finally, it is set forth that "throughout this trilogy glowed the spirit of liberty, which in the final stage became fierce, and crowned its long task by giving to our people political, religions, and per- sonal freedom, guaranteed by constitution."
Mr. Sterne's work is a conscientious performance of the handy. manual kind, and does not pretend to be anything more. The first four chapters deal with the Constitution of the Union, the Legislative Department, the Executive Power, and the Judicial Power; and as the original articles of Confederation and Con- stitution, and the supplements which were made to them in the course of time, are given in an appendix, this portion of the book will be found very valuable for reference purposes. The remaining chapters treat of the post-constitutional history of the Union—Mr. Sterne's narrative of the Civil War is rather scrappy—the changes and development of the State constitu-
• Constitutional History and Political Development of the United States. By Simon Sterne, of the New York Bar. London: Cassell, Better, Galpin, and O. 1833.
The Development of Constitutional Marti/ in the Eng'ish Colonies of America. By Ebon Greenough Scott. New York: E. P. Putnam's Sons. 1883.
tion, and current questions productive of changes in the Con- stitution of the Union generally. Mr. Sterne has nothing fresh to say on the political corruptions, the Civil-Service jobbery, and the like, that, to observers like Mr. Spencer, constitute the element of danger in the magnificent American prospect. He attributes them, as everybody has been doing for the last quarter of a century, to the apathy of the cultured and moneyed classes in the Union. This reminds us, however, of a shrewd re- mark which appears in one of the volumes of essays and addresses that have come from the pen of the present Governor of Madras. Referring to the popular opinion that government should be vested in intellect and property, he says so it should, if only intellect and property were perfect. Property must be far from perfect in the United States, when those who hold it give themselves up to the worship of millions, and what is far worse, of millionaires. Culture, too, must be far from perfect on the moral side when it leads to apathy, isolation, coterie cynicism, and a disinclination to take some part in the public life,—which in the eyes of the author of Nat ural Religion is synonymous with irreligion, and in the eyes of all thoughtful people is a form of irreligion. The hope for the future of America lies not so much in the possibility of the moneyed and leisured forming a ring against the jobbers and place-hunters, as in the probability of their yet rising to a thorough apprecia- tion of all their own responsibilities and obligations, in their struggling, in fact, after perfection, in the religious, New- Testament sense. One word as to Mr. Sterne's style. It is clear, but rather too ostentatiously adapted to the under- standing of that personal or rather third-personal power in modern democratic life who used to be described as " the ordinary reader," but is now coming to be known as "the plain man." Such a style is apt to defeat the purpose of the writer who affects it. Thus a phrase like "a monetary question which has been unfortunately muddled in the United States by demagoguery" has three faults. Its meaning is far from clear, it is long to clumsiness, and it is far from pretty.
Of Mr. Eben Greenough Scott we confess not to have heard, until we read his work on the development of liberty in the American Colonies ; and, possibly, it is his first important effort in literature. If so, we sincerely hope it will not be his last. It looks like the production of a man of the modern and mellowed New-England type, serious, and yet imaginative, who, having leisure on his hands, has devoted it to studying and reflecting on the early history of his country in the light of modern ideas. He is the master of a rich and vigorous style, not altogether free, however, from that literary weakness of the cloister, a proneness to over-compression. A single quotation will show our mean- ing. Speaking of Roger Williams, the remarkable man who founded Rhode Island State, and who anticipated by more than two centuries both the Liberation and Aborigines Protection Societies of our own day, Mr. Scott says :—" His mind was active and clear, and he reasoned well ; he had studied hard, and was learned ; he had thought much, and was a man of opinions; he had sought light, and had convictions ; he was ambitious, reso- lute, courageous, and of inflexible will ; he had winning manners, and being of an amiable, sociable disposition, was born to per- suade men. Yet the first thing he did was to set them against him." There is power here, but it is the power that strives to put a quart into a pint measure. Mr. Scott is happiest in his short characterisations. We have never seen a better description of clever, audacious, unscrupulous Charles Townshend than "a political railer."
We have already explained the plan and given the funda- mental ideas, of Mr. Scott's work. For the rest, it may be fairly described as a sermon of the old-fashioned and eloquent Scotch sort, having for its text Burke's declaration, in his speech on conciliation with America, that liberty there was made fierce by six capital causes,—descent, the colonial forms of government, religion in the Northern provinces, manners in the Southern, education, and remoteness of situation. Mr. Scott deals with all these capital causes in detail, and we may say at once that we have never seen this subject treated so ex- haustively by a writer who is, above all things, readable. The chapters on "Religion in the Northern Provinces," "Manners in the Southern," and "Education," are exceptionally good. The most original portion of Mr. Scott's work is that in which he sets forth the commercial relations of the colonies to the mother-country and to each other—the Act of Navigation and the Acts of Trade—as among the con-causes of the American Revolution. For the first time, ample justice is done to James Otis, a remarkable but little known man, who seems to have been to John Adams very much what Adam Smith was to the younger Pitt. Books of this kind make various impressions on the reader, of which, as a rule, one sur- vives the others. The enduring impression, in the present instance, is that of the township, as the essential strength of the political organisation of New England. "The Govern- ment of France," says De Tocqueville, "sends its agents to the commune; in America, the township sends its agents to the Government." In differentiating between French and American constitutionalism, we have not yet got beyond De Tocqueville, as in differentiating between English and American constitu- tionalism we have not yet got beyond Bagehot.
Previous page
