[Sidenote: English institutions in all the colonies.]
There was always one important circumstance in favour of the union of
the thirteen American colonies into a federal nation. The inhabitants
were all substantially one people. It is true that in some of the
colonies there were a good many persons not of English ancestry, but
the English type absorbed and assimilated everything else.
All spoke the English language, all had English institutions. Except
the development of the written constitution, every bit of civil
government described in the preceding pages came to America directly
from England, and not a bit of it from any other country, unless by
being first filtered through England. Our institutions were as English
as our speech. It was therefore comparatively easy for people in one
colony to understand people in another, not only as to their words but
as to their political ideas. Moreover, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, the common danger from the aggressive French
enemy on the north and west went far toward awakening in the thirteen
colonies a common interest. And after the French enemy had been
removed, the assertion by parliament of its alleged right to tax the
Americans threatened all the thirteen legislatures at once, and thus
in fact drove the colonies into a kind of federal union.
Pages:
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331