The twenty-sixth chapter, which examines philosophically, and in some detail, the Articles of Confederation, discloses the foundation of our present institutions, with the notions or prepossessions in the minds of those who were then conferring together for the first time, from which the articles themselves took shape and color. Our recent trials give special interest to the examination thus made; and, of the thousand theories thrown out by different disciples of Mr. Calhoun in the last twenty years, half would have been spared us, had those who propounded them made any such study as is here, of their lamentable insufficiency for the purposes of government. The idea of the Confederation, according to Mr. Bancroft, was to substitute the power of the Confederacy for the right and prerogative of the King under the old state of things. He makes this out, even in some curious detail. Now, as all the Revolutionary statesmen had already, in the discussions of their separate colonies, gone to the very edge in abridging the prerogative of the king, it followed, in mere consistency, that in the new system they abridged the function of the Confederacy with the same severity. It is scarcely fair to suppose, that all the shackles which, by its own act, the Continental Congress imposed on all its successors, were due merely to mutual jealousy among States, which were, on the whole, working very cordially together. Something of such jealousy there was; there was also, very predominant, the fear on the part of the small States, that they should be swallowed up by the large, as the kingdom of Man might be devoured before breakfast by the King of Great Britain. Then there were all the warnings from history of the power which Austria gained in the German Confederation, and like examples all the way back in time. But beyond this, as Mr. Bancroft very fully shows, there was the habit, ingrained now in near twenty years of controversy, of abridging central power for the enlargement of that of the separate members of the State.

We have been so accustomed to kick and cuff the old Confederacy, whenever we dug it up from its half-forgotten grave, as to forget that there was in it any advance on the

social order which preceded it, or that we inherited any thing of prime value from it when in that grave it was buried. But Mr. Bancroft calls attention to "four capital results, which Providence, in its love for the human race, could not let die," which were secured by this misshapen and loose-jointed instrument, this child of revolution, whose birth was so long protracted, and at last effected in such agonies, that it began to die as soon as it was born, and that all men rejoiced when at last its sufferings were over.

First, that a republic was possible through a continent. This principle was first announced, and really first estab lished, by the Confederation. The old republics were simply the governments of cities; the Continental Congress proclaimed that republicanism may equal the widest empire in its bounds. So triumphant has been the demonstration of this truth, that, in this generation, we forget that it was ever doubted. But, in truth, the leading political writers of the last century speak of republics, almost of course, as being the governments of small communities, precisely as the ecclesiastical authorities are fond of speaking of congregational order in the Church, as an order belonging only to scattered communities or to the infancy of things.

Next, the Confederation recognized the rights of men, as men, and it gave reality to the Union by making the recognition. It permitted no distinction of sect, color, or race: free "inhabitants" were free citizens. This was an immense enlargement of the measure of acknowledged right and privilege. The necessities of slavery still compelled the distinction between "free" and "slave; " but, within that distinction, all other distinctions vanished, however sharply they might have. been drawn in the local statutes or constitutions. "The United States, in Congress assembled, suffered the errors against humanity in one State to eliminate the errors against humanity in another."

A consequence almost necessary of this catholicity was the granting to the free inhabitants of each State "all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States." To this equalizing process, involved in the central bond,

do we owe the gradual assimilation of the various State constitutions to each other, -the disappearance, one by one, of the tests by which at first they tried to screen Jews or Gentiles or Unitarians or Catholics out of their body politic. While the elective franchise in each State was regulated by its own decisions, all the "free inhabitants" of the United States were subjects or citizens of the nation. Mr. Bancroft well remarks, that, notwithstanding the anxiety with which the term "people of the United States" is avoided in the Articles of Confederation, the nation, as a unit, was really recognized, not to say organized, when the fealty or allegiance to it of each white inhabitant was thus proclaimed. Mr. Tayler Lewis has well shown that this nationality existed already, before the colonies had confederated, in the common relation of English subjects, in whatever colony, to the English crown. As Mr. Bancroft puts it, "America, though the best representative of the social and political genius of the eighteenth century, was not the parent of the idea in modern civilization, that man is a constituent member of the state of his birth, irrespective of his ancestry. It has become the public law of Christendom. Had America done less, she would have been, not the leader of nations, but a laggard." America did her utmost, in this matter, by proclaiming that the "state" of a man's birth was the whole continent in which he was born. No accident could limit his nationality to "the Hampshire Grants," or to one of the "Counties on the Delaware."

Lastly, the Confederation attempted the largest liberty to individual man. In the Greek republics, "the state existed before the individual, and absorbed the individual. . . . The Greek citizen never spoke of the rights of man. The individual was merged in the body politic." But, in the Articles of Confederation, the freedom of the individual could be recognized, because conscience had asserted its rights; and, in the assertion, the unity of despotic power was broken.

These four principles, now like household words with us, the indefinite territorial extent of a republic, the relation of the United States to the natural rights of its inhabitants, the

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identity of privilege of each citizen in whatever State, and the freedom of the individual everywhere, were completely asserted for us, so as never to be lost again in the muchabused Articles of Confederation.

Our limits do not permit us to go at present further into an abridgment even of the more remarkable results of this remarkable volume. The eight volumes - published successively in thirty-two years, almost a generation of men-have led up to the period of romance, of excitement, and of critical interest, which we wisely call "The Revolution," as if there were no other. Of "the Revolution," the critical years pass under review in this volume, and in the volume which is to follow. Mr. Bancroft is grateful, doubtless, that the concentrated white light of another revolution is brought to bear on the examination, so that no detail may be thought insignificant, and no secret of the circulation lost in some provoking shadow. He seems to us to rise worthily to his theme. We have been particularly pleased with the simplicity and consequent clearness of his descriptions of battles. Without a diagram on the page, he fixes for us the position of regiments, squadrons, and batteries, so that each reader can prepare his own diagram. Again, he does not come to an event till he has fairly shown its cause. If we are surprised, it is because history itself is surprised. And, indeed, often we find, that, a hundred years after the fact, we understand it better than those who were standing by. Once more, the narrative is relieved by the philosophy which inquires into principles and into consequences, but never so overwhelmed by a cloud of specula tion, that we forget the substratum that is below.

The narrative is always brilliant, and the reader follows from page to page with interest, and wishes there was more. On the whole, there is little to be asked for, in the way of improvement of Mr. Bancroft's historical style. It seems to us sometimes marked by the defect of a supposition that the reader is already well acquainted with the history, even in details, as if that this new volume were rather a discussion of facts which are widely known, than an original statement

of them. Now, the truth is, that four readers out of five, who take this volume in hand, will have read no other full history of the war; and for such readers in truth, as for all readers of history in theory, the narrative should be written for the first time. For instance, the following sentence, loosely constructed as some of Mr. Bancroft's sentences are, does not tell the new-born reader, who here first drinks in his American history, any thing that he needs to know:

"The unfitness of the highest officer in the naval service, as displayed in his management of a squadron which had gone to sea in the spring, had just been exposed by an inquiry; and, in spite of the support of the Eastern States, he had been censured by a vote of Congress yet from tenderness to his brother, who was a member of Congress, a motion for his dismissal was obstructed, and a majority ordered the aged and incompetent man to resume the command which he was sure to disgrace."

There is nothing in this sentence to show that the aged and incompetent man was Hopkins; and, on the other hand, all that has been said before leads the reader to suppose that it was Nicholas Biddle. It is only afterwards that an allusion made to Hopkins leads to a guess that it is he.

The boys who write most of the literary criticisms, so called, for the newspapers, are in the habit of complaining that Mr. Bancroft uses archaisms of language. Indeed, we remember one constitutionally ill-tempered person, who said of the eighth volume, that one needed an archæological dictionary to understand it. In regard to this volume, this charge is founded on three expressions:

66

Dearly did the Cherokees aby their rising."

"The Landgrave of Hesse, though a Roman Convertite."

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Laveering against the southerly winds."

All that is to be said of these three words is, that, if people do not know what the words mean, it is time they did. They are words used by the best English writers of the best period of English literature. The fault which we should find with Mr. Bancroft's style is, not that he indulges too much in the