And  with  the  transplantation  of  men  out  of  the  old  world  into  a  wilder-
ness went  also  the  transplantation  of  institutions, — with  the  same  result.
The  new  way  of  life  and  association  thrust  upon  these  men  reduced  the  com-
plexjthings  of  government  to  their  simples.  Within  those  untouched  forests"
fney  resumed  again,  as  it  by  an  unconscious  instinct,  the  simple  organization
of  village  communities  familiar  to  their  race  long  centuries  before,  or  here
and  there  put  palisades  about  a  group  of  huts  meant  to  serve  for  refuge
and  fortress  against  savage  enemies  lurking  near  at  hand  in  the  coverts,  and
lived  in  their  "  hundreds  "  again  under  captains,  to  spread  at  last  slowly  into
counties  with  familiar  sheriffs  and  quarter-sessions.    It  was  as  if  they  had

xxii


PREFACE

brought  their  old-time  polity  with  them,  not  in  the  mature  root  nor  even  in
the  young  cutting,  but  in  the  seed  merely,  to  renew  its  youth  and  yield  itself
to  the  influences  of  a  new  soil  and  a  new  environment.  It  was  drawn  back
to  its  essential  qualities,  stripped  of  its  elaborate  growth  of  habits,  as  they
themselves  were.  All  things  were  touched,  as  it  were,  by  the  light  of  an
earlier  age  returned.  The  study  of  American  history  furnishes,  as  a  conse-
quence, materials  such  as  can  be  found  nowhere  else  for  a  discrimination
between  what  is  accidental  and  what  is  essential  in  English  political  practice.
