THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 159 



across the course of the vessels, and the great navigator following those 

 pilots of the air south westward, lost the continent, and the power of 

 Spain was planted only on the islands. As a flight of birds gave, ac- 

 cording to the legend, augury for the first doings of Rome's history, so 

 in another way it has a place in our earliest annals. Again, on his 

 second voyage, the path of Columbus lay among the islands; and when 

 the papal power was invoked to determine the disputes between Spain 

 and Portugal, respecting their rights of discovery, and Alexander VI ad- 

 judged his famous partition, which seems to appropriate to these two 

 contending powers all that was discovered, and all that was to be dis- 

 covered in the new world — soon after this exercise of power, (more 

 than human by one less than human in the crimes that have made the 

 name of Borgia infamous,) soon after, the sovereign of a country which 

 held slacker allegiance to Rome, gave the commission to the Cabots, 

 and that authority, which has been well styled " the oldest American 

 State paper," set the Saxon foot upon this soil, the first of European 

 feet to touch the continent. The land was not meant, either by claim 

 of discovery or by papal gift, to be the Spaniards' home. The two 

 small English vessels which had cleared from Bristol, "with authority 

 to sail to all parts of the east, west, and north, under the royal banners 

 and ensigns, to discover countries of the lieathen, unknown to Chris- 

 tians, to set up the king's banner there, to occupy and possess, as his 

 subjects, such places as they could subdue, with rule and jurisdiction," 

 coasting along perhaps some thirty degrees of latitude, from Labrador 

 to Virginia, gave to an English race their title here. Thus early, 

 within a very few years after the beginning of western discovery in the 

 fifteenth century, was laid the foundation of future dominion; tor what- 

 ever other European races might thereafter seek a home on this portion 

 of the continent, it would be only for such partial or temporary occupa- 

 tion as would sooner or later be absorbed in the occupations by that 

 race which was then, in that era, the first to touch the mainland. It 

 was thus that the way was prepared to make the country the heritage 

 of that race which speaks the English tongue, a race in whose institu- 

 tions the name of people was never lost, whether in their furthest anti- 

 quity in the forests of Germany, or under Saxon, Danish, or Norman 

 rule, after their migration to Britain, whether under the kingly confed- 

 eracy of the Saxon, or under the power of the strongest Norman sover- 

 eigns, Plantagenet or Tudor ; so that, with the popular element ever 

 present, every poHtical struggle has been either to regain something 

 lost, or to expand and improve some ancient right. 



In studying the originating influences of our institutions, political and 

 judicial, there can be no question, I believe, but that the first influence 

 is to be sought in the character of the race. Powers and habits of 

 thought and feehng come to us with our blood, and extend to all who 

 come within the range of their influence. We have but expanded 

 what the Saxon began more than a thousand years ago, before, indeed, 

 the races of the north had a history of their own or a place in the his- 

 tory of the more civilized south. The influence of race is most obvious 

 when we think of the inheritance of the common law, or such a special 

 tradition, from unknown origin, as the trial by jury. My present pur- 

 pose is to trace the agency of the same principle, I mean the influence 



