0 A COURSE IN CIVIL GOVERNMENT, BASED ON "THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. (SECOND EDITION.) PHILADELPHIA: ELDREDGE & BROTHER, No. 17 North Seventh Street. HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, by ELDREDGE & BROTHER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE ALL that is sacred in life is inseparably bound up with government. Its nature is complex; it implies rights and duties; it involves human lives and activities; its organization is required of the whole people; its administration is committed to their representatives. The story of the Government of the people of the United States has its beginning far away across the sea, and the story of political rights in England has its sequel in the story of political rights in America. Nor have these rights been accidental acquisitions: they are the fruits of American experience, growing out of the instincts, the character and the attainments of the Anglo-Saxon race. In this work the Government is presented in its historical, its legal, its political and its economic relations. Movements in population, immigration, education, habits of thought among the people of various parts of the country, inventions, discoveries, religion and public morality, have been considered as factors equally potent with formal constitutions and the enactments of legislative bodies in determining the character of our Government. The peculiar claim of popular government to universal authority is its identification with the great principles of civilization. It claims to be founded upon the rights of man and the principles of human nature. The chapter |