relations with him. Man naturally worships some being superior to himself. We have rights of conscience and we have moral duties. These we are permitted to exercise freely so far as they do not break the peace of the State. These rights and duties are concerned in the maintenance of religion; the proper regard for the Sabbath; the reverence for sacred things and ideas; the support of public worship; the bettering of the world; the conscientious attention to the duties of life. For many centuries men struggled to realize the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience: that right has been and is fully realized in this country. Closely related to these rights and duties are those of a moral character which are implied in the word "ought." All good government is moral in its character.

35. Rights often Mingle.-A right may at the same time be industrial, political, social or moral. We cannot always separate a right from its companions. Government is concerned to protect them all. A school illustrates them all it is a place of industry; here we learn to govern and to be governed; it is a society, and has rights and duties as such; all schools are subject to moral rights and duties.

36. The Four Groups of Rights and Government.— All of our rights and duties are natural to us as human beings; government is based upon them, is protected by them, and in turn protects them. They all unite in the citizen. The government of a people is understood when its industrial, political, social and moral rights are understood. The sovereignty of an opinion and its expression in a form of government or in the election of a body of public servants represents all these rights; hence we have. come to speak of our political rights as representative of all our rights and as of supreme importance.

CHAPTER III.

THE STORY OF POLITICAL RIGHTS IN ENGLAND. 37. Our German Ancestors.-About two thousand years ago the Roman Empire comprised the civilized world. It was busy conquering the barbarous nations, and sent its legions and its greatest soldier, Julius Cæsar, into Northern and Western Europe to conquer the strange peoples who then lived in Germany and Gaul (France). For nearly four hundred years the struggle continued, but the brave Germans were never conquered by Rome. On the contrary, the Germans in great numbers left their own wild country, and their armies marched into Italy and seized Rome. About 500 A. D. the different nations of Europe, as they are now located on the map, made a beginning. The Germans also moved westward into the lands now called Denmark, Schleswig and England. They were so strong as largely to fix the customs, the laws and the language of Northern Europe to the present day. From Germany to England and from England to America has been the journey of political rights. These rights and duties were not formerly so plainly understood as at the present time for the knowledge of rights increases as men learn them by experience.

38. Constitutions.-Nations like individuals learn by experience, and they express their knowledge of rights and duties in important writings which we call "constitutions." If you examine a written constitution, you observe that it is an instrument expressed in a formal way, and is divided into articles and sections. But written constitutions are not very old; the people of America were the

first people in the history of the world who formally set down their civil institutions in a written constitution. Since our ancestors began to form constitutions, two centuries ago, most civilized nations have learned to form them, so that it may be said that America has taught the world how to frame a written constitution. It is interesting to know how our ancestors in this country became in the habit of expressing their ideas on political rights and duties in a constitution. The story is as follows:

39. Origin of the Town and of the Township.-The Germans, whom the Roman legions could not conquer, were a brave, warlike and virtuous race. Every warrior was a freeman. He and his kindred lived together in a cluster of houses, each having a door-yard and a garden. Around this settlement of one kindred a hedge or ditch or rude, strong fence was made. The hedge was called a tûn; it might enclose a farm or a hamlet. He who lived within the tûn was called a tûnes-man, as the dweller within the boundaries of the settlement is still called by us. The house of the tûnes-man was called bûr, or burgh, a dwelling, from which we get our words borough and burgess, and the last syllable of the names of some towns, as Pittsburgh, Edinburgh. The Northman called his strong house gardr or garth, whence our words garden and yard.

40. Freemen as Landholders.-The freeman owned land and was the head of a family. The unit of measure in rights and duties is the family; this unit is found among savages, herdsmen, tillers of the soil and manufacturing peoples. The family is a sacred institution and as ancient as the race itself. All the lands controlled by the townsmen were comprised within the tûnscipe, or township, and to this day the township remains the unit of measure for our political divisions. When we say "town" or "township," we use a name that has been used continuously for more than two thousand years for the same object. But government becomes more complex as men

become more civilized. The townsman of to-day has many more political rights and duties than had the German tûnes-man of long ago.

41. The Parish.-When Christian missionaries came among the Germans a new word came also-the word parish. The parish marked the boundary assigned by the Church to the priest for the performance of duties. The parish was usually of equal extent with the township. The word itself meant the church-home, for all the people of a parish had the same church home. The two words, township and parish, continued to describe the same area of land, and were brought from England to America as expressive of two harmonious ideas. The ideas of men changed and the words fell far apart as Church and State were separated, but in the southern part of the United States the term parish continues to mean what the term township signifies in the North-a civil division of the State.

42. The Hundred.-The German townsmen often assembled together in political meetings, called gemoten, for the purpose of electing town officers. At these meetings. laws were made, and our word "by-law" is said to mean the law made by the township, or, as it was once called in Northern England, the "by." The townships united for the convenience of administering justice comprised the hundred. The court of the hundred decided disputes. Jury trials were introduced by the slow growth of custom. The court of the hundred was the lowest court, and it so continues in Germany, England and the United States to this day. In some of our States even the word hundred remains, as in Delaware; the court of the hundred we commonly call the Justice's court.

43. The Shire.-Several hundreds comprised a shire, which meant a share or part of the whole country. The word is still common in England. In New England the word is often used in conversation, but the subdivisions of

the States in this country are commonly called counties, a name that was introduced into England by the Normans, and which then designated a military division of the realm. The shire had also courts and officers, the prototypes of our county courts and officers.

44. The Shire-reeve. The principal officer of the shire. then, as now, was the shire-reeve or sheriff, signifying then the representative of the king's authority, and with us the representative of the majesty of law and the authority of the people. The county court was held for the trial of cases more important than those tried in the court of the hundred or of the township. It is so at the present time, and now, as then, the person who is summoned to attend court is under the special protection of the law.

45. Our Civil Institutions very Old.-We see, then, that our civil institutions are very old, but the oldest are our local institutions, those that are right about us and which seem to thoughtless persons so commonplace. These local institutions lie at the foundation of our government and of the constitutional governments of Europe. Although the United States is a new country, its civil institutions are as ancient as those of England or Germany.

46. German Conquest of Britain.-About the middle of the fifth century the German tribes began to land in England. They soon made the country their own, and introduced German ideas and forms of local government. Two tribes took the lead: the Angles or Inglisc, who gave their name to the language, and the Saxons, who gave their name to the civil institutions. Our institutions are not strictly Anglo-Saxon, for the Americans have discovered many rights and duties for themselves such as never have existed in Europe.

47. Civil Institutions Subject to Laws.-Political rights and duties are not discovered by accident or experiment; they are controlled by laws. These laws are based upon the nature of man. From time to time discoveries