State Convention—republican-democracy, i 67 
in their towns and villages. In these three instances, we seem to 
arrive at the oldest known remains of the ancient local self-gov- 
% 
ernments, arrested and stunted, however, by their being as Lieber 
expressed it, “ no union of these many isolated self-governments, 
and no organic state government, and therefore no liberty.” 
Greece, Itaty, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, France, 
Hungary, Holland, Germany, Spain and England, each in its way, 
originated and in very different degrees has perpetuated local self- 
government. 
The peculiarity and advantage of our own country in this re¬ 
spect, was that it had no political past, and that its governments 
were organized by the English and their descendeuts who were 
the most advanced in constitutional freedom of any race. Our 
forefathers brought here the more advanced ideas of an advanced 
people. They found no existing government or precedents of any 
kind to hamper their freest movements. The traditions of the 
Old World from its remoteness lost much of their influence. 
Hence, we have the otherwise wonderful results of political de¬ 
velopment in this country; first in New England, and later 
throughout the country. The compact signed in the cabin of the 
Mayflower in 1620, the body of liberties of the Massachusetts 
colony in New England, enacted by the general court in 1641, 
with their causes and consequences, bore their proper fruit more 
than a century later in the declaration of independence and the 
constitution of the United States. Never was a nation more 
favored in the conditions of political and material progress. Us¬ 
ing the vantage ground of colonists, from old and civilized nations, 
we entered at once upon the third stage of development as a con¬ 
stitutional republic. 
This brings me to a consideration of the 
CONSEQUENCES OF AMERICAN POLITICAL THEORIES 
upon our people, and upon our political and social life. 
So far as the primary and essential rights of person, property, 
contract and family are concerned, the United States did little 
more to start upon than to adopt the existing and conceded doc¬ 
trines of older nations ; but subsequent experience and conviction 
have done much to qualify these Old World views. 
