rially modified since their first adoption; in some the changes have been revolutionary, in all the tendency of the changes has been towards a common form approaching a democratic model. At the outset, however, the contrast between their different provisions was very marked. The original instruments were framed by bodies of men of different nationalities, living at great distances apart from each other, and with varying views, the results of study, experience, or inherited traits of character, as to the form of government and as to the institutions which were best fitted to their respective wants. Some provided for a State Church as in England, others prohibited its establishment; some gave religious liberty to all, others restricted it to Protestant believers in the Bible; some provided for voting by ballot, others for the English system of voting viva voce; some provided for two legislative houses, others for only one; some gave the governors great power, others hampered them with councils; some carried provisions for the freedom of the press beyond anything ever known in England, others were satisfied with English guarantees; some abolished primogeniture, others retained it undisturbed; some provided for free schools, others left that subject to the Legislature; some gave to prisoners accused of crime the privilege of appearing by counsel, others remitted them to the tender mercies of the common law; some denounced the sanguinary criminal code of England, others made no allusion to the subject. These are but specimens of provisions in the original state constitutions, which show how divergent were the views of the men who framed these instruments upon many subjects of the first importance. Some of these provisions, as we shall see hereafter, were incorporated into the Federal Constitution, but others, having no relation to national affairs, have been left to bear fruit in different circles. But even these constitutions form but a small part of the evidence to be examined by one who wishes to discover the origin of American institutions. Back of them will be found a body of laws and customs, many of them entirely un-English in their character, which, for more than a century before the Declaration of Independence, moulded the character of the people who then became a nation. If historians had devoted to the investigation of these subjects one tithe of the labor which has been given to tracing the influence of the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Normans on Great Britain, we should hear little of the surprise now expressed at the fact that America differs so much from the mother country. Returning now to our general subject, and passing from those matters of organization which relate particularly to the structure and machinery of the general government, let us glance at a broader field and consider some more important institutions, which may be likened to the material of which the building is constructed. It will hardly be disputed that the laws and customs which, after those establishing religious and political equality, are most distinctive in the American system relate to the ownership of land, popular education, and local self-government. The relative importance of these three subjects may be questioned by different thinkers, but probably all will agree as to their combined influence. Taking them up in the order named, the question at present to be considered is how far America has, in these matters, patterned after England. DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND 25 First, then, as to land.* In England about half of the land is owned by one hundred and fifty persons. In Scotland half is owned by some seventy-five persons, while thirty-five own half of Ireland. Taking all Great Britain together, about four fifths of the profitable soil is owned by seven thousand individuals, and the other fifth by about one hundred thousand. All the land of the United Kingdom amounts to about 77,000,000 acres ; of these some 46,000,000 are under cultivation, and the remainder is unproductive. Yet Great Britain imports half of her grain, while about one twentieth of her popu lation are paupers. Were the great parks which are now kept for purposes of luxury or mere ostentation, and the vast uncultivated wastes which now only preserve game or serve as sheep pastures, divided up among little proprietors who would make every rood of ground available, England would hear much less of her labor question. As it is, however, everything for centuries has tended in the opposite direction. First stands the law of primogeniture, under which, in case of intestacy, all the real estate goes to the oldest "The fact is," says a writer in the British Quarterly Review, "that the mode in which property, and especially land, is distributed has the chief influence in determining the political and social character of the people." Again he remarks: "Indeed, it may almost be said that land and aristocracy are in England convertible terms." British Quarterly Review, April, 1886, p. 279. "Free Land," by Arthur Arnold (1880), cited Gneist's "History of the English Constitution," transl. London, 1886, ii. 376; also "France and Hereditary Monarchy," by John Bigelow, 1871, p. 53. "Our National Resources, and How they are Wasted," William Hoyle, pp. 40, 42; "Home Politics," Daniel Grant, p. 8, quoted by Bigelow, pp. 31-35; “In Darkest England," by William Booth. male heir, thus building up great families. Next stands the system relating to the transfer of land among the living, which clogs its alienation and renders its purchase by the poor almost impossible. Every American knows how simple is our system of recording deeds and mortgages. Under it, in ordinary cases, any man of average intelligence can search his own title and make out his own conveyance, or can have it done in the country for about five dollars; for, unless a deed or mortgage is recorded in the proper office of the county, it is of no avail against the later bona-fide instrument of an innocent party duly put on record. In England, except in some small sections of the country where this system has been lately introduced, nothing of this kind exists. All title-deeds are kept by the owner; and unless a careful examination is made by a lawyer, there is no security for a purchaser whatever. In no other civilized country of the world do sales and mortgages of land habitually take so long a time to transact, and nowhere else are the charges in the case of small properties so great. * Time and time again, from the days of Cromwell down, the attempt has been made to introduce the recording system which prevails in the United States and in most of the countries of the Continent, but always without success. Parliamentary committees have recommended it, upon the ground that it would give increased security, and facilitate, by cheapening, the transfer of land. But there lay potent reasons for its rejection. The large proprietors, representing the aristocratic element of society, have desired that the mode of acquir * Westminster Review, July, 1886, p. 80. The lowest legal charge is about thirty dollars. ENCLOSURE OF ENGLISH COMMON LANDS 27 ing land should be neither easy nor cheap. Land is for aristocrats, and not for the common people. The result is that the great class of yeomen, the men who in bygone centuries gave England her greatness, has almost entirely disappeared.* In its place has grown up a race of peasants, well-nigh the most ignorant and brutalized among the so-called civilized peoples of the globe. Not content with refusing to sell land to the poor, and making its transfer difficult and expensive, the ruling classes have gone one step further. Formerly a large part of the soil of England was owned in common, each village or community holding its great tract open to all the inhabitants for purposes of pasturage. But since the beginning of the last century, 9,000,000 acres of these common lands, more than one eighth of the whole soil of Great Britain, have been taken possession of by private individuals and enclosed under acts of Parliament. It was in reference to this wholesale robbery of the poor that the well-known lines were written: "The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common, Who steals the common off the goose." In view of these facts, we can appreciate the words of one of England's keenest observers in speaking of the kaleidoscopic constitutions of France: "It does not require any special clearness of vision to perceive that so far from having closed the era of great changes, Great Britain and Ireland have only entered on it."‡ Pauperism, its Causes and Remedies," Prof. Fawcett, p. 208. + Prof. Thorold Rogers, Time, March, 1890. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1886, p. 322. |