Between  that  period  and  the  year  1774,  when  the  first  Con-
tinental Congress  met  in  Philadelphia,  several  other  temporary
and  provisional  associations  of  colonies  had  been  formed,  and
the  people  had  been  taught  the  advantages  of  union  for  a  com-
mon purpose  ;  but  they  had  never  abandoned  or  compromised
the  great  principle  of  community  independence.  That  form  of
self-government,  generated  in  the  German  forests  before  the
days  of  the  Caesars,  had  given  to  that  rude  people  a  self-reliance
and  patriotism  which  first  checked  the  flight  of  the  Roman
eagles,  which  elsewhere  had  been  the  emblem  of  their  dominion
over  the  known  world.  This  principle — the  great  preserver
of  all  communal  freedom  and  of  mutual  harmony — was  trans-
planted by  the  Saxons  into  England,  and  there  sustained  those
personal  rights  which,  after  the  fall  of  the  Heptarchy,  were
almost  obliterated  by  the  encroachments  of  Norman  despotism  ;
but,  having  the  strength  and  perpetuity  of  truth  and  right,  were
reasserted  by  the  mailed  hands  of  the  barons  at  Eunnymede  for
their  own  benefit  and  that  of  their  posterity.  Englishmen,  the
early  settlers,  brought  this  idea  to  the  wilds  of  America,  and  it
found  expression  in  many  forms  among  the  infant  colonies.
Mr.  Edward  Everett,  in  his  Fourth-of-July  address,  delivered
in  New  York  in  1861,  following  the  lead  of  Judge  Story,  and
with  even  less  caution,  boldly  declares  that,  "before  their  inde-
pendence of  England  was  asserted,  they  [the  colonies]  consti-
tuted a  provincial  people."  To  sustain  this  position — utterly
contrary  to  all  history  as  it  is — he  is  unable  to  adduce  any  valid
American  authority,  but  relies  almost  exclusively  upon  loose  ex-
pressions employed  in  debate  in  the  British  Parliament  about

*  Bancroft's  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  vol.  i,  chap.  ix.
