370 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



conception of the nature of Government. We are without 

 the stability that comes from long habit,* and without any 

 guidance in the shape of national theory. I am so clear 

 that this is the next subject of supreme public moment that 

 I am glad to devote the Monthly largely to its elucidation. 



37 Queen's Gardens, June yj, 1881. 

 My dear Youmans : I got your last letter some three 

 or four days ago, and regret to hear that you are not 

 gaining strength more rapidly than appears. However, if 

 you are avoiding relapses, that is something; and now that 

 you have, I suppose, favourable weather, we will hope the 

 progress will be more rapid. You ought to stay down in 

 the country and bask in the sun ; or, if too hot, then in the 

 shade of a tree. Lounging about in the open air, doing 

 nothing except, if you can, carrying on a lively conversa- 

 tion, is the best thing for you. 



* If my old friend were now here at my elbow, he would not merely 

 pardon but would earnestly thank me for pointing out the fallacy in this 

 offhand remark. It is one of those common fallacies into which every 

 thinker and writer is liable to be betrayed, and no one would have ac- 

 knowledged it more quickly than Youmans. It arises from the prevalent 

 loose fashion of regarding American history as beginning with the Declara- 

 tion of Independence, or at farthest with the settlement of Jamestown. 

 The fallacy is that a " new people " cannot have old political habits. In 

 point of fact, however, we Americans are not a new people, and we are 

 not " without the stability that comes from long habit." We possess this 

 stability in an extremely high degree, and it is just this ingrained stability 

 of political character, the result of long ages of political habit, that is our 

 chief safeguard against turbulence. What were our forefathers doing at 

 Lewes and Runnymede, or in the days of Henry II and Becket ? What 

 were they doing in their open-air assemblies in Friesland and Sleswick be- 

 fore Hengist's keels ploughed the North Sea? They were slowly and 

 surely building up that stability of political habit by which we, their chil- 

 dren, have profited in many a crisis within the memory of living men. 

 Properly to understand the American people and their political acts, one 

 must habitually carry in mind the whole series of ages between Arminius 

 and Cromwell. 



