obeyed a captain, or war leader. When, therefore, Angles and Saxons entered upon a period of conquest in England, which lasted a hundred and fifty years, it became quite easy for the captain, imperceptibly, and, to a certain extent involuntarily, to add to his proper office that of law giver and administrator. In this way, especially after the exchange of Saxon for Norman administrators, the still rebellious Saxon freeman became hopelessly entangled in a network of machinery, local and national, which kept him for many years an obedient, unresisting subject.

So, being deprived for centuries of any considerable weight in the English counsels, the commoner turned his attention to the increasing of his material well-being. In this he was favored by the stern enforcement, by the Norman kings, of law and order, and an enduring peace; for, though English soldiers have often fought on the continent, it may be said with almost literal truth that not since the Norman Conquest has English soil felt the footsteps of a foreign foe. For this blessing, England is indebted to her insular position, which has also pointed so unmistakably to her destiny as a sea-faring power, carrying the world’s trade in her merchant ships and scattering colonies over every continent.

Summing up then, the conditions favoring English progress at its beginning: we have a people, instinct with the love of freedom and power, subjected to law by desire for victory in war, and kept obedient by bewilderment of machinery. Forced to reconcile themselves to Norman usurpation of all power in church and state, they devote themselves to the acquisition of wealth, and, because of their insular position and small territory, end in commercial supremacy and colonial expansion.

The English people are, through their American descendants, our teachers in everything, and their lessons we eagerly and unquestioningly learn and practice. But we ought now, fairly and candidly to consider how far we may realize with our dispositions and our circumstances, the greatness which England has achieved. Could we colonize Cuba, our environing conditions would be favorable to political and economic development. Cuba is an island, fertile and, for commerce, almost ideal in its situation. Or, can we not, remaining here, share in the management of this splendid country, exercising the powers and fulfilling the duties of government in those states where we are in the majority, and influencing the government of other states where our numbers are not so great? If either career is open to us, the study and imitation of the English model will abundantly repay us. But do we believe that it is so? No, we cannot hope that either path will be ours. The white races have to-day the power and the determination to rule the world.

But, as if the first obstacle was not great enough, I must add another which is even greater: we have not the disposition to follow England had we the opportunity to do so.

The modern state is the product of centuries of war. Its architectural model is the mediaeval castle. From that school of discipline we have been excluded for more than two hundred years. That we have not quite forgotten our early lessons, our fidelity to our leaders in battle and devotion to our cause, have put beyond question. It has been more than once shown that there are men among us who can charge up a hill in the face of a withering fire; but who among us is capable of jumping into the air, and falling with both knees upon a fellow-student in a college foot-ball game; or of using against a savage tribe, as England proposed to do, the mutilating dum dum bullet, forbidden by the rules of civilized warfare, but too expensive to throw away? Yet this is the spirit of the conqueror, careful, patient, exact, merciless, cool. One-third of a victory to-day belongs, it is said, to the treasury office, one-third to the war office, and only the remaining third, to the general and soldiers in the field.

Since both