79 



invention, in their new home, of this keystone of a system, which 

 it is contended that they brought complete and unshaken without 

 it, across the seas, in their ships. It is no disparagement of our 

 German ancestors to ask the question, whether they did not adopt 

 a framework which they found, or reconstructed upon ruins 

 which themselves had made ? Among the most specious explana- 

 tions of the possession of the property of others, and sometimes 

 a valid one ; is, the taking care of it, or the repairing of it 

 even the repair of the injuries received by its conveyance : and 

 one of the strongest tokens of political sagacity is to adapt, to 

 the wants of the present and future, the upshot of the past that 

 has grown up to its work. This seems to have been an instinct of 

 both of the two largest of our progenitor nationalities ; and it is 

 among the happy results of it that we still live. Referring, 

 however, to the numerous material evidences already mentioned, 

 of great municipalities scattered over the land ; the absence of a 

 corresponding apparatus for the occupation and rule of the wide 

 rural territory, would have been a vacuum intolerable in social 

 nature, and to any conception of it. These claims, on the part 

 of our indigenous ancestors, are not meant to detract from the 

 merits of those of the foreign accession. We owe much of what 

 we are to both : many of what, without ostentation, we may call 

 our virtues : and among these we have derived from both that 

 sense of justice which forbids us to withhold our acknowledgments 

 from either ; and which, it is hoped, dictates the words upon 

 this page. What is here being written is not in detraction of 

 our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. These have had more able defenders : 

 whose zeal, however, has sometimes tempted them beyond the 

 just limits of that office, into that of excessive laudators. 



However this may be, the crude and undiscounted doctrine has 

 gone out as the only one to be taught for the future ; and this 

 evolved theory is promoted with all the zeal of a religious propa. 

 ganda. The earlier history of our island not only the Celtic 

 but even the Roman scenes upon it an essential section of the 

 history of the English People, is ignored, or even prohibited, 

 in school books ; as being that of nations that are positively 



