39 
Bosworth field and Marston Moor. Blenheim and Culloden. Through them wo 
inherit the glory of an inalienable birthright in the common law, in the growth of 
parliamentary government, in the reformation of Knox, and the martyrdom of Lati- 
mer and Ridley. Through them we claim an equal inheritance in Wyclif and Bacon 
and Shakespeare; in Newton and Boyle and Harve^; in Burleigh and Halifax and 
Chatham; while we allow them to share the greatness of those who are peculiarly 
our own, Franklin, Washington, Longfellow, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham 
Lincoln. 
Now, inasmuch as the students in our colleges and universities are or should be 
educated nol as scholars and scientists only, but as citizens who will he concerned in 
shaping the destinies of the greatest people whom the world has ever seen, it is not 
less incumbent that adequate provision be made for the attainment of the one end 
equally with the other. The State university must ho what Ezra Cornell, in found- 
ing the university which bears his name, wanted it to become, viz, a place where 
everything could he taught which it is possible to teach, ami where everything could 
be learned which it is possible lor one to know. 
I would urge, then, with all the insistence which I may, the necessity that history 
and political philosophy with all their correlated subjects should become a special 
feature of the university and collegiate instruction which we represent. In many 
institutions they are already distinctive features. They should he made distinctive 
and obligatory in all. 
Within the last two hundred years history has been made rapidly in America. 
For a time almost isolated from contact with European nationalities and in touch 
with the old World mainly through official relationships, political life developed 
without interference from abroad. -The theory of the New England commonwealth 
gradually became more political and less theological; the limits imposed upon relig- 
ious freedom gradually relaxed and political freedom became more unrestained. 
The colonists were law-abiding, but the laws to which they subjected themselves 
were of their own making. So strong, however, was the traditional respect for law 
and order, and so conservative were they when least restrained by external authority, 
that their legislation never tended to sap the foundations of the commonwealth nor 
to impair the obligations of contract. Legislation was generally along the lines of 
precedent, following the recognized principles of the common law and adhering 
closely to the rights and duties laid down in the great charter of English freedom. 
When under new conditions new legislation was needed for which no precedent 
existed known to the lawmakers, the ample shield of the spirit of the common law 
and of Magna Charta was invoked to _cover them. So in the interpretation of the 
law by the judge on the bench; if statute law did not exist to meet the cause in 
action, the common law was so interpreted as to apply, and the spirit of jurisprudence 
came to the relief of the dispenser of justice. 
And this was exactly what had happened hundreds of years before in YVessex and 
Kent and East Anglia and Mercia and Northumbria. The principles of law and 
equity had grown up silently in the community, enlarging in their application as 
new conditions arose, and became embeddedin the hearts of Englishmen ages before 
they found articulate expression in the laws of Ina and Offa, Alfred and Ethelred; 
ages before the charters of John and Henry and Edward placed the seal forever on 
the recognized and inalienable rights of Englishmen. This spirit and these tradi- 
tions they brought with them to the new world. England alone of all the world 
could supply such colonists, and England alone of all the world could continue, with- 
out exhaustion, the work of colonization on such a scale as to assure ultimate success. 
The Puritans of the North and the Cavaliers of the South, reinforced in later times 
by the sturdy Scot from the Lowlands and the Highlands and, later on, by the equally 
hardy Scots of Ulster formed the basis of American nationality, and a nobler ances- 
try the world has never seen. The characteristics of the first settlers remain the 
predominant characteristics of the typical American of to-day and, however affected 
by subsequent infusions from continental sources, remain in large measure unmodi- 
fied. This prepotency of race and of blood is manifest in every phase of the history of 
the American people. Only people of Anglo-Saxon blood, Anglo-Saxon endurance, 
and Anglo-Saxon devotion to freedom couid have maintained and carried the strug- 
gle for independence to a successful issue against the power of the mother country. 
Only people of Anglo-Saxon blood could have maintained and successfully concluded 
the second trial of strength with the might of the British Empire in the war of 1812. 
Only the descendants of this heroic stock could have routed t hi 1 armies of Mexico and 
planted the Stars and Stripes upon the ramparts of Chapultepec and Churubusco; 
and iii that terrific contest, fought out forty years ago for the maintenance of the 
integrity of the Republic, when armies larger than those engaged at Marengo, Wag- 
ram, Austerlitz, Jena, or Waterloo, met each other on the field of battle, the men on 
