DEPARTMENT XX -POLITICS 



(Hall 2, September 20, 2 p. m.) 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. DUNNING, Columbia University. 



CHANCELLOR E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, University of Nebraska. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS OF NINETEENTH- 

 CENTURY POLITICS 



BY WILLIAM ARCHIBALD DUNNING 



[William Archibald Dunning, Lieber Professor of History and Political Philo- 

 sophy, Columbia University, b. Plainfield, New Jersey. A.B., A.M., Ph.D., 

 LL.D., Columbia University. Fellow, Lecturer, Adjunct Professor, and 

 Professor, Columbia University. Member of American Historical Association ; 

 American Political Science Association; New York Historical Society; Massa- 

 chusetts Historical Society (corresponding). Author of Essays on the Civil 

 War and Reconstruction; History of Political Theories. For nine years man- 

 aging editor of Political Science Quarterly.] 



WHEN Louisiana was acquired by the United States the politics 

 of the world was centered about a single nation, and the politics of 

 this nation was centered about a single individual. France and 

 Napoleon epitomized the dominant principles of the day; revolu- 

 tionized France meant liberty and equality, the rights of man, 

 national democracy; Napoleon meant the resistless armed might 

 of democratic propagandism. Before the enthusiasm of the French 

 nation and the genius of their chosen leader the principles, the 

 practices, and the men of the old regime vanished from Western 

 Continental Europe. Only in Russia and in the British Isles did 

 conservatism find a secure refuge, and from these points of support, 

 with the principles and material resources of England as its chief 

 dependence, it waged unrelenting war on all things French and all 

 things Napoleonic, and in the end it was triumphant. 



With 1815 came the termination of the long wars; the smoke and 

 shouting of battle passed away and the readjustment of institutions 

 and political systems began. Reaction was manifest everywhere; 

 the dogmas and the men that for nearly twenty-five years had 

 cowered in the remotest and obscurest hiding-places of the Continent, 

 now assumed control of political life, and a war of extermination 

 was entered upon against everything that had been identified with 

 the Revolution. But the work of the French Republic and the 

 Napoleonic Empire had been too thoroughly done throughout western 

 and central Europe to permit of ready eradication, even by the 

 drastic methods employed by Metternich and his satellites. Lib- 



