reverence for kings. The circumstances were such that neither principle of government could exterminate the other, so they were brought into accommodation by means of a doctrine in which each found its place. Prerogative and popular rights should be so balanced as to protect the nation from tyranny on the one side and from mob rule on the other. The different estates of the realm should be so represented in the government that each should be able to check excess upon the part of another. Support for this doctrine was found in the writings of Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, and Tacitus. Montesquieu's adherence to it in opposition to the general current of European opinion made his "Spirit of the Laws" more influential in England and America than that great work ever was in the author's own country. Blackstone exhibited this doctrine as the fundamental principle of the British constitution, with such a parade of learning as to make his conclusions seem indisputable, and with such noble resources of style that the "Commentaries" took rank as a literary classic as well as a law book. The same doctrine eventually received from Edmund Burke the most eloquent expression ever given to political ideas. It floats in the music of his grandest passages - as when he speaks of "that action and interaction which in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggles of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe."

Two currents of thought may be discerned in colonial politics. One of these had received its impulse from the Puritan movement. A theocracy has really no love for democratic ideas; at a later period abundant evidence of this was furnished by New England. But it is always the disposition of theocracy, when confronted by royal authority, to encourage the assertion of popular rights, and in Massachusetts, especially, the state of popular sentiment showed an infusion of anti-monarchical prejudice. The main stream of colonial ideas was, however, that which flowed in the channels of English law, bearing with it an inveterate attachment to prerogative as an essential ingredient of a free constitution, a necessary counterpoise to representative institutions. Even so radical a thinker as Thomas Paine was forced to defer to this sentiment. In his celebrated pamphlet, "Common Sense," issued in January, 1776, after urging the people to look above to a king, "who doth not make havoc of His people like the royal brute of England," he adds: "Yet that we may not appear defective in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth, placed on the divine law, the work of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know that so far as we approve of monarchy, in America the law is king." Prejudice against democracy is turned on the Tories by the argument that England is too far

away to give adequate protection, so that if Amer ica should neglect to provide herself with a government of her own, "some Masaniello may hereafter arise who, laying hold of popular disquietude, may collect together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government finally sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge." Paine's suggestion is prophetic of what happened. After the adoption of the constitution the veneration became attached to it which was formerly felt for royalty.

Failure to appreciate the intensity of public attachment to the principle of balanced powers of government would leave concealed the true cause of the Revolutionary struggle. It was the firm conviction of thinking men that the only hope of free institutions lay in the adjustments of the English constitution. If these seemed to place the liberties of the people in a dangerous strait between the rock and the whirlpool, so much the more reason why any deviation from the traditional course should meet with resolute resistance. It was not the extent of the taxation-that was trivial in comparison with that which independence made necessary; it was not that the doctrine "no taxation without representation" was regarded as an essential principle of legitimate governmentit was not included in the enumeration of rights. attached to the constitution and has never been formulated as a constitutional principle; - not be

cause of these things did the revolt of the colonies take place. It was because the actions of the British government assumed an absolute authority which violated the spirit of the English constitution, the fundamental compact controlling the relations between the king and his people. The deepest political instincts of the race were outraged.

This state of public sentiment explains those diverse manifestations which make the American uprising unique among revolutions: sincere professions of loyalty to the British crown in the very thick of battle with British armies; extreme hesitancy in effecting an alliance with France even after George III had set the example of calling in a foreign power by the hire of foreign mercenaries; great aversion to issuing a declaration of independence even after it had become a manifest necessity to enable the colonies to obtain help from abroad. The declaration of the cause of taking up arms, which repudiates any intention of separating from the British crown, was read before the troops on Prospect Hill, in July, 1775, amid such shouts that the British on Bunker Hill put themselves in array for battle.1 It required somewhat violent methods to force a declaration of in

dependence through Congress. Evidently the American leaders were revolutionists, not from choice, but from compulsion. They renounced 1 Bancroft's History, Vol. VIII., p. 47.