82 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
doing sacrificed to a great extent the principle of local 
self-government. The Roman government came to 
be a close corporation, administering the affairs of the 
empire through prefects and subprefects; and when 
we say that the Teutonic invasions infused new life 
into Roman Europe, I suppose what we chiefly mean 
is that the Germans reintroduced to some extent the 
“town-meeting principle,” and strengthened the sense 
of local and personal independence. In England the 
principle of local self-government became so deeply 
rooted that it survived the overthrow of the feudal 
system; but in France — the most thoroughly Roman- 
ized country in Europe—it never acquired a very 
firm foothold, and the overthrow of the feudal system 
there resulted in government by a close corporation 
and prefects, not altogether unlike that of the Roman 
Empire. 
Now, it is one characteristic of these highly central- 
ized forms of government by prefects that they are not 
easily transplanted. They are highly artificial forms 
of government, in so far as they are the products of 
very peculiar combinations of circumstances operating 
for a long while in a particular country. When taken 
away from the peculiar sets of circumstances in which 
they have originated, and introduced into a new field, 
they fall into decay, unless kept up by support from 
without. There is no natural principle of life within 
them. On the other hand, the town meeting, or the 
assembly of heads of families, is, so to speak, the pri- 
mordial cell out of which the tissue of political life has 
been originally woven among all races and nations. 
The civilized government which has learned how to 
secure concerted action without forsaking this pri- 
