The Beginnings of New England | Page 7

We must even go back, as nearly as may be, to the
beginning of things. [Sidenote: Gradual shifting of primacy from the
men who spoke Latin, and their descendants, to the men who speak
English]
If we look back for a moment to the primitive stages of society, we
may picture to ourselves the surface of the earth sparsely and scantily
covered with wandering tribes of savages, rude in morals and manners,
narrow and monotonous in experience, sustaining life very much as
lower animals sustain it, by gathering wild fruits or slaying wild game,

and waging chronic warfare alike with powerful beasts and with rival
tribes of men. [Sidenote: Political history is the history of
nation-making]
In the widest sense the subject of political history is the description of
the processes by which, under favourable circumstances, innumerable
such primitive tribes have become welded together into mighty nations,
with elevated standards of morals and manners, with wide and varied
experience, sustaining life and ministering to human happiness by
elaborate arts and sciences, and putting a curb upon warfare by limiting
its scope, diminishing its cruelty, and interrupting it by intervals of
peace. The story, as laid before us in the records of three thousand
years, is fascinating and absorbing in its human interest for those who
content themselves with the study of its countless personal incidents,
and neglect its profound philosophical lessons. But for those who study
it in the scientific spirit, the human interest of its details becomes still
more intensely fascinating and absorbing. Battles and coronations,
poems and inventions, migrations and martyrdoms, acquire new
meanings and awaken new emotions as we begin to discern their
bearings upon the solemn work of ages that is slowly winning for
humanity a richer and more perfect life. By such meditation upon men's
thoughts and deeds is the understanding purified, till we become better
able to comprehend our relations to the world and the duty that lies
upon each of us to shape his conduct rightly.
In the welding together of primitive shifting tribes into stable and
powerful nations, we can seem to discern three different methods that
have been followed at different times and places, with widely different
results. In all cases the fusion has been effected by war, but it has gone
on in three broadly contrasted ways. The first of these methods, which
has been followed from time immemorial in the Oriental world, may be
roughly described as conquest without incorporation. A tribe grows to
national dimensions by conquering and annexing its neighbours,
without admitting them to a share in its political life. Probably there is
always at first some incorporation, or even perhaps some crude germ of
federative alliance; but this goes very little way,--only far enough to
fuse together a few closely related tribes, agreeing in speech and habits,

into a single great tribe that can overwhelm its neighbours. In early
society this sort of incorporation cannot go far without being stopped
by some impassable barrier of language or religion. After reaching that
point, the conquering tribe simply annexes its neighbours and makes
them its slaves. It becomes a superior caste, ruling over vanquished
peoples, whom it oppresses with frightful cruelty, while living on the
fruits of their toil in what has been aptly termed Oriental luxury. Such
has been the origin of many eastern despotisms, in the valleys of the
Nile and Euphrates, and elsewhere. Such a political structure admits of
a very considerable development of material civilization, in which
gorgeous palaces and artistic temples may be built, and perhaps even
literature and scholarship rewarded, with money wrung from millions
of toiling wretches. There is that sort of brutal strength in it, that it may
endure for many long ages, until it comes into collision with some
higher civilization. Then it is likely to end in sudden collapse, because
the fighting quality of the people has been destroyed. Populations that
have lived for centuries in fear of impalement or crucifixion, and have
known no other destination for the products of their labour than the
clutches of the omnipresent tax-gatherer, are not likely to furnish good
soldiers. A handful of freemen will scatter them like sheep, as the
Greeks did twenty-three centuries ago at Kynaxa, as the English did the
other day at Tel el-Kebir. On the other hand, where the manliness of the
vanquished people is not crushed, the sway of the conquerors who
cannot enter into political union with them is likely to be cast off, as in
the case of the Moors in Spain. There was a civilization in many
respects admirable. It was eminent for industry, science, art, and poetry;
its annals are full of romantic interest; it was in some respects superior
to the Christian system which supplanted it; in many ways it
contributed largely