which imply an empire in the geographical sense. "The British Empire" is a familiar example of such a domain, from whose home government political imperialism is absent. Even a pure democracy may, as a dominant state, lord it over dependencies as an imperial domain, without debasing its democracy. As the modern view is well summed up by Mr. Snow:

"The old conception of an Empire as a Kingdom composed of Kingdoms, and of an Emperor as a King who rules over other Kings, is passing away, and in its stead has come the conception of the Empire as a State composed of distinct and often widely separated populations or States, of which a State is the Central Government or Emperor.'

Vattel, in his time, had come so far as to see much new meaning in the term "empire," and to attribute to every nation, in addition to its own domain, the right of "the empire, or supreme command over persons, by virtue of which it orders and disposes, according to its will, of the whole intercourse and commerce of the country." But it was only a few years later that Burke, when discussing the relations between Great Britain and her American Colonies, said: "My idea of it is this: That an Empire is the aggregate of many States, under one common Head, whether this Head be a monarch, or a presiding republic."

The idea that the United States should in time become the "presiding republic" of such an Empire is by no means a new thought of the nineteenth century. Such a state as Great Britain was recognized to be in the eighteenth century, the early American statesmen often assumed to be the destiny of America. It was in this geographical sense that Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Ellsworth, Dickinson, Marshall, and others,-men whose partisan views

were far from concurrent,-agreed in using the expressive phrase "American Empire." The precedents cited by Mr. Snow show how amply and continuously the actual practice of America in holding and governing her dependencies has justified this prophetic expression of the faith of the Fathers.

The conclusion reached by Mr. Snow, as a result of these novel historical investigations, is that "the people of the American Union, by their written constitution, consented to by all the people of the Empire, have divided the governmental power under an unwritten Constitution, so that the Union is the Imperial State as respects the dependencies." Thus has been established a "Federal Empire," composed of "the people and lands of the American Union and the people and lands of its dependencies." The final chapter of the work is an exposition of the "Imperial Obligations" which are, by the establishment of this Federal Empire, "imposed upon the American Union and its people." This imperial state "has arisen out of the need for social and economic peace and for equalization of economic conditions, exactly as Confederations and Federal States arose; it is the only form of organism by which the federative principle can be extended beyond the limits of lands occupied by a homogeneous population capable of self-government."

The excerpts here given from this searching study into our colonial and national history will perhaps give some idea of its ambitious purpose. It is not merely a valuable contribution to the popular knowledge of our own institutions, it is an epoch-making book, as a profound exposition of the inmost characteristics of the unwritten constitution of the Republic.

The work exhibits defects which are largely in mat

ters of detail, and which detract somewhat from its high character, but which are apparently due to the author's excess of enthusiasm for his thesis. There is an unnecessary refinement of analysis, which furnishes no strength to his exposition or his argument, in the attempt to array the Revolutionary statesmen against each other as AntiImperialists and Federal-Imperialists; a distinction which the author does not suggest to have been understood by themselves, and which even he does not make clear. The same undue zeal has pressed too far some of his deductions respecting the positions occupied by the antagonistic parties prior to the Revolution. He regards it as established "as a fundamental principle of the Constitution of the British Empire for the American Colonies," that "the King was the representative of Great Britain as the Imperial State, and that Parliament was also its representative, superior to the King;" and he insists that "nothing was better settled than that there were no constitutional conditions or limitations upon the power of Parliament when exercised within the realm of Great Britain." But the colonial statesmen disputed both of these claims as to the supremacy of Parliament, and supported their contention by English precedents, legislative and judicial; and the arguments of James Wilson and John Adams came near to demonstrating that once there had existed limitations upon the power of Parliament, the benefit of which the colonists had not surrendered, and back to which they went in deraigning their political rights. Omission of these superfluous statements would not have made any less effective or valuable the author's general conclusions, which his numerous quotations from historical sources abundantly sustain.

XXI.

RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION.

A FOREFATHERS' DAY ADDRESS.*

The wise proverb of Scripture, which assures us that "Righteousness exalteth a Nation," brings before our minds two distinct ideas which ordinarily address themselves to us separately. One is the conception of a habitual course of right conduct, which we usually associate with the individual human being; the other, that of the State or Nation, as an organized governmental entity. Righteousness, in the sense of the Scriptures, means right acting and living, from the proper motive; that is, doing the right for the sake of the right. The term implies a recognition and understanding of the difference between right conduct and wrong conduct, based upon an adoption by the will of the highest possible motive, namely, to do the right because it is right.

A common interpretation of this passage of Scripture is, that the aggregate of the righteousness of all the individuals in a Nation enhances the honor and the merit of that Nation, and thereby tends to exalt it. Whatever may

*Address delivered at First Congregational Church, Minneapolis, Minn., Dec. 23, 1900.

be said in favor of such an interpretation, the sentence is susceptible of another, much broader and deeper, and more comprehensive. To make a Nation, a mere aggregation of people does not suffice. It is an organized aggregation, organized upon a definite plan, for certain definite purposes of government,-which alone constitutes a Nation. So the conception differs essentially from that of a mere mass of people No matter what may be the ties which hold those people together, if they be not governmental ties, there is no Nation. The conduct of the Nation, and the conduct of its people, may proceed along different lines. It is possible to conceive of a people of whom all, or the great majority, may be persons of righteous conduct individually, and yet their aggregate righteousness may not make the Nation righteous; indeed, it may have no necessary effect upon the national conduct. The people may be religious, kindly disposed, and associated in churches; there may be even an established state-church; and we may call the people righteous; and yet the government may be conducted for purposes, and from motives, that are the reverse of righteous. As history has often shown, a people who are generally righteous as individuals may be ruled by a government that is selfish, or cruel, or revengeful, or everything that is unrighteous. If there be a statechurch, some prelate may be the prime minister, one of irreproachable private life, but who in all dealings with other governments is selfish, untrue, hypocritical and despicable. It was among people professedly righteous as individuals, that the debasing maxim of diplomacy arose, that language is given to a diplomat in order that he may conceal his ideas. Louis XIV, though pretending to piety as a man, selfishly and arbitrarily absorbed