The Evolution of an Empire | Page 4

society and government, the base of which was
the _individual free-man_. The family was considered the social unit.
Several families near together made a township, the affairs of the
township being settled by the male freeholders, who met together to
determine by conference what should be done.
This was the germ of the "town-meeting" and of popular government.
In the "witan," or "wise men," who were chosen as advisers and
adjusters of difficult questions, exist the future legislature and judiciary,
while in the king, or "alder-mann" ("Ealdorman") we see not an
oppressor, but one who by superior age and experience is fitted to lead.
Cerdic, first Saxon king, was simply Cerdic the "Ealdorman" or
"Alder-mann."
They were a free people from the beginning. They had never bowed the
neck to yoke, their heads had never bent to tyranny. Better far was it

that Roman civilization, built upon Keltic-Briton foundation, should
have been effaced utterly, and that this strong untamed humanity, even
cruel and terrible as it was, should replace it. Roman laws, language,
literature, faith, manners, were all swept away. A few mosaics, coins,
and ruined fragments of walls and roads are all the record that remains
of 300 years of occupation.
And the Briton himself--what became of him? In Ireland and Scotland
he lingers still; but, except in Wales and Cornwall, England knows him
no more. Like the American Indian, he was swept into the remote,
inaccessible corners of his own land. It seemed cruel, but it had to be.
Would we build strong and high, it must not be upon sand. We distrust
the Kelt as a foundation for nations as we do sand for our temples.
France was never cohesive until a mixture of Teuton had toughened it.
Genius makes a splendid spire, but a poor corner-stone. It would seem
that the Keltic race, brilliant and richly endowed, was still unsuited to
the world in its higher stages of development. In Britain, Gaul, and
Spain they were displaced and absorbed by the Germanic races. And
now for long centuries no Keltic people of importance has maintained
its independence; the Gaelic of the Scotch Highlands and of Ireland, the
native dialect of the Welsh and of Brittany, being the scanty remains of
that great family of related tongues which once occupied more territory
than German, Latin, and Greek combined. The solution of the Irish
question may lie in the fact that the Irish are fighting against the
inevitable; that they belong to a race which is on its way to extinction,
and which is intended to survive only as a brilliant thread, wrought into
the texture of more commonplace but more enduring peoples.
It was written in the book of fate that a great nation should arise upon
that green island by the North Sea. A foundation of Roman cement,
made by a mingling of Keltic-Briton, and a corrupt, decayed
civilization, would have altered not alone the fate of a nation, but the
History of the World. Our barbarian ancestors brought from
Schleswig-Holstein a rough, clean, strong foundation for what was to
become a new type of humanity on the face of the earth. A Humanity
which was not to be Persian nor Greek, nor yet Roman, but to be
nourished on the best results of all, and to become the standard-bearer
for the Civilization of the future.
[Sidenote: Teutonic Invasion, 449 A.D.]

The Jutes came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion.
It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449
A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of
England. It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on
British soil(495 A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles
shortly afterward followed and occupied all that the Saxons had not
appropriated (the north and east coast), the actors were all present and
the play began. The Angles were destined to bestow their name upon
the land (Angle- land), and the Saxons a line of kings extending from
Cerdic to Victoria.
[Sidenote: English Kingdoms Consolidated.]
Covetous of each other's possessions, these Teutons fought as brothers
will. Exterminating the Britons was diversified with efforts to
exterminate one another. Seven kingdoms, four Anglian and three
Saxon, for 300 years tried to annihilate each other; then, finally
submitting to the strongest, united completely,--as only children of one
household of nations can do. The Saxons had been for two centuries
dominating more and more until the long struggle ended--behold,
Anglo-Saxon England consolidated English under one Saxon king! The
other kingdoms-- Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and
Essex--surviving as shires and counties.
In 802 A.D., while Charlemagne was welding together his vast and
composite empire, the Saxon Egbert (Ecgberht), descendant of Cerdic
(the "Alder-mann"), was consolidating a less imposing, but,