of the established axioms, they cannot be applied to America-and she is not to run out into monarchy, anarchy, and despotism. Sociology, with all its various theorems, is at fault, and America does not adjust itself to its frames. All societies began in a synthesis, religious, mental, philosophical, as well as in a social or political unity or authority; and after traversing various phases of activity and development, they run out into the epoch of analysis, subdivision, research, science, and criticism. America, religiously or philosophically considered, is the creation of analysis, and accordingly of that phasis in which other societies have terminated; politically and socially, America personifies the combination of free individuality with association, in a self-conscious democracy-a combination hitherto unknown in the history of nations. The problem before America is therefore different from those which other societies had to solve. She has therefore emphatically to reconstruct a new and higher synthesis, out of the negation, criticism, and analysis, which generated and gave her birth. America, it may be, is destined to lead the ascension on the spiral, and by her example relieve society from the vicious circle in which it has hitherto been im-prisoned. And as in the dialectic process, a lower, inferior term dissolves in one of a higher and more general order; of the same ascending character ought to be the solutions which are evolved from the social existence and functions of a genuine democracy. The present state of America is considered an experimental one. Be it so. To a successful experiment succeeds generalization.

CHAPTER IV.

SELF-GOVERNMENT.

SELF-GOVERNMENT is the absolute and necessary complement of democracy. Together they constitute the highest term of social development and organization, in fellowship and equality. They reciprocally fulfil the ultimate training of man as a social and moral being.

Self-government, as conceived, understood and realized in America, excludes emphatically a priori, and annihilates that notion of government which has hitherto been considered as among the cardinal constitutive elements, as well as cements of a well-organized and welldeveloped society. Self-government is the negation of authority, of initiative, of direction to be exercised from above, under any title of supremacy based on grounds assumed, artificial, and delusive. Self-government confirms the emancipation of reason, judgment, and will in the individual, from subjection to any kind of moral and physical compulsion, to the reason, judgment and will of another. It is the practical consecration and realization of the indestructible rights of man. It is limited only by voluntary association, with the aim of securing the general welfare of the whole, at the least possible sacrifice of individual freedom.

Authority, as the founder of society, and its consequent exclusive intiatory, directing, or governing power, was inherent in all ancient and European nations. Even the freest among them always recognized in some conception, form or manifestation, such an authority lodged above the mass of the people; authority as aristocracy, patriarchate, etc., giving a moral or positive legal sanction to the exercise by the people of political rights, incompletely as those rights were enjoyed. Such rights were wrested out or conceded. Thus the idea and the fact of the existence of a supreme authority vested in one or several individuals, became almost indestructible. The partial self-government in ancient societies, was always intermixed in some way or other with such authoritative interference from above. In European republics there were always castes or classes, guilds or corporations, exercising authority over the mass of the population; of which, even in those republics, only a small part enjoyed political rights, or was occasionally consulted-but did not decide -about the internal management and husbandry of domestic daily concerns. Communal institutions and subdivisions, as partially enjoyed in Italy, Germany, Spain or France, relating to administrative objects, always acted under the sanction, the direction of a distinct, superior centralized governmental authority, encircling and penetrating society, whatever might be its form or name. France and Germany, the mayors of the communes are nominated by the government. Absolute, constitutional monarchy, republic, all equally as states and governments, encircle and penetrate, with their anaconda-like folds, the most minute and distant recesses of the governed. In England, authority from above lies at the basis of the constitutional liberties and institutions. The government concentrated in royalty has the major right of initiative,

In

of direction, and interference, has the creative attribute. Out of the three elements composing the political society, two of them, the royalty and the lords, are inborn, supe rior authorities and privileged powers, the lords being the creation of royalty, and only the house represents, and up to this time represents only in part-the English people. Thus in this tripartite compound, two are direct negations of self-government, and the third is only its imperfect assertion. Communal institutions, to be sure, have been developed for centuries in England, in a fulness unknown to the European continent. But they do not repose on universality of rights and duties, even as regards the administration of their internal concerns, they do not expand as freely in all directions, as in America. However slightly, there is always present and felt the action of a government above them, a centralization overhauls them. And finally in the functions of these communal institutions in the country, if not in cities, there is always felt the moral or de facto influence and the presence of a distinct social class. The nobility, the gentry, the squires personally and by their patronage, exercise a direct action on the smallest commune.

Centralization is an unavoidable corollary of a power, which is exercised by an authority from above. Decentralization goes hand in hand with all the evolutions and ramifications of self-government. The European populations are so thoroughly penetrated and imbued with deferen. tial respect for centralization, they have been so thoroughly trained and drilled for ages of their existence, by sovereign authority, acting from a centre in all directions; that whatever might be the transition to a new order, they would be unable to go through the one or enter the other, without centralization and a superior direction. The present state of Europe may be regarded as a symptom of the

epoch of an exhausted political evolution. A higher social order is to succeed. Such inauguration will and must be prompted, accomplished by the ancient governmental process, by an action from above-and not by a spontaneous impulse of the people.

The community, composed of free and equal men, was the fountain-head, the corner-stone of American society. Self-government lay therefore as the exclusive kernel of a future development. The township was the primitive state from which the start was made. The township therefore still remains in its function, the generating power, the foundation, the nursery of self-government and of American social order. On the self-government of townships reposes the freedom of the state, and from it is evolved in wider and wider, all-embracing circles, the whole existing political structure. A township forms in itself a free and independent state, perfectly organized for all purposes. It legislates for taxes itself, and executes its own enactments, without any interference or sanction of the so-called general government. It is connected with similar embryonic states, by the cement of the law; is amenable only to the courts of justice, and these laws the associated townships frame and enact by legislatures, representing the whole people moving in these social cradles.

Although originally these communal habits and notions were brought here by the settlers from the mother country; events and new conditions gave to them a vigorous and complete, and hence almost a new expansion. The first settlements in America, and especially those of New England, being private individual undertakings, were not under any immediate authoritative, governmental direction. The first colony formed a community of equals, who deliberated upon and decided all necessary questions and measures. All these objects were of more vital