THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 165 



pleasing to find associated with the early plans of American coloniza- 

 tion the name of one who has left so matchless a memory — the scholar, 

 statesman, poet, the friend of poets, the soldier whose early death was 

 mourned by a nation — a death memorable with its last deed of heroic 

 charity, when putting away the cup of water from his own lips, burn- 

 ing as they were with the thirst of a bleedflig death, he gave it to a 

 wounded soldier with those famous words, eloquent in their simplicity, 

 " Thy necessity is yet greater them mine.''^ 



Permit me to extend this digression a little further to notice an Ame- 

 rican allusion which occurs in the English literature of the same period 

 in which Sir Philip Sidney flourished. When, in 1590, Spenser gave 

 to the world the first part of "' The Fairy Qmccw," he dedicated that 

 wondrous allegory to "The most high, mighty, and magnificent Em- 

 presse, renouned tor pietie, virtue, and all gracious government, Eliza- 

 beth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, Frijnce, and Ireland, and 

 Virginia." Yes, there stands the name of that honored State — then, 

 as it were, the name of British America ; and while there is many a 

 reason for the lofty spirit of her sons, the pulse of their pride may beat 

 higher at the sight of the record of the "Ancient Dominion" on the 

 first page of one of the immortal poems of our language. 



To return to my subject. It can readily be perceived that such 

 schemes of colonization as were planned during the reign of Ehzabeth — 

 Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, Sir Philip Sidney's, Sir Walter Raleigh's — 

 could hardly have resulted otherwise than in the establishment of vast 

 feudal principalities, to continue under rulers who would have been no 

 less than viceroys, or to be resumed under the immediate sovereignty 

 of the throne. Such occupation of the land could scarce have led on, 

 by any natural sequence and series of events, to a popular govern- 

 ment — still less to a political system in which the element of "Union" 

 would exist. There would not have been enough of partition. There 

 would not have been enough of either the spirit or the privilege of dis- 

 tinct and separate colonization — the establishment of communities in- 

 dependent of each other, destined in a later age to grow so naturally 

 into Union. Colonization then would have been too much like that of 

 France in Canada — something far more regular and uniform, and im- 

 posing in appearance as an affair of State ; but fraught with no such 

 momentous power of development as was latent in the freer Saxon 

 method. There would have been far less oi' that ^^ wise and salutary 

 neglect^^ which Mr. Burke spoke of when, in his speech on conciliation 

 with America, he said: "The colonies, in general, owe little or no- 

 thing to any care of ours. They are not squeezed into this happy form 

 by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government; but through 

 a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been sufTered to 

 take her own way to perfection." It was, indeed, " a wise neglect." 

 But let me add that it was a wisdom which cannot, with accuracy, be 

 predicated of a passive, negative, neglectful State policy, but of the 

 providential guidance of the race by which there was bestowed upon 

 them the freedom of self-discipline, of political power and expansion. 

 It sounds like a paradox and a contradiction ; but it is an obvious truth 

 that the first element of union is separation — distinctiveness of existence 

 and of character. The history of union begins not with unity ^ but with 



