Roses, they monopolized attention, so that local privilege was overlooked. Other centralizing tendencies appeared. The Tudor monarchy dominated every political factor. The intense interest in religion tended to obscure all interest in the details of local right. Finally, through the exigencies of class conflict, the House of Commons came to be exalted into a position of supreme authority. The people were trained to look to the House of Commons (as to a sort of special Providence) as their sole hope and source of liberty. In the meantime the Englishman lost his grip upon the ancient and venerable local institutions of Magna Carta. Instead of revitalizing these he prefers to receive, as free gifts from the House of Commons, a newly created Poor Law Union and practically newly created city, county, and parish councils.

The American colonies were founded before the centralization of power in the House of Commons was reached; and they furnished the occasion for a revival of the Magna Carta idea of the importance of local privilege. The colonists had suffered enough from the encroachments of feudal tyrants to give them an exaggerated sense of the importance of the local charter privileges. In America they found also a vacant continent, a field for building a vast empire founded upon the organized neighbor

hood.

The Swiss inherit local institutions whose origin is shrouded in the mysteries of the past. The Americans were already a trained and experienced people, and by conscious act they created new local institutions, or they adapted old institutions to new conditions. Out of their local institutions they formed the State. By the federation of States they formed the United States. In Switzerland and in America the prevailing movement in free government has been from the local area to the area of wider jurisdiction; while in France and in England the spirit of democracy first captured the central governing agencies and then proceeded to bestow upon the localities the agencies of free government.

America furnishes the most conspicuous example of the progressive formation of a great empire upon the basis of free local institutions. Each of the thirteen colonies was a training school in the federation of local institutions into a government of wider area. Every new State which has been added has repeated this history. First, there is a town, township or parish. Then these are federated into a county. The counties are made the basis for an organized territory; and later the territory becomes a State. For three hundred years the Americans have been practicing what the Greeks tried to do and failed to do. They have been maintaining their highly

cherished local liberties by the formation of governments of wider area with adequate powers to secure harmony among the parts. Through the agency of the State, harmony of action is secured among counties, cities, and towns. Through the general government of the United States harmony among the States is secured.

The model worked out in the United States admits of indefinite extension. The system has been adopted with varying degrees of success in every part of the new world and in Australia. There is no reason why the principle of federation should end with the separate independent states. The same motives which have led to the formation of a government at Washington to secure harmony among fifty States may lead to the formation of agencies representing all the republics of the new world to harmonize the interests of the American republics. Such an agency is now in process of formation under the name of a Pan-American Congress. By a like process of reasoning there is being established at The Hague a Conference and a Tribunal, whose object is nothing less than the federation of all the nations, with the ultimate fulfillment of the dream of poets, prophets, and philosophers

the Parliament of Man, the federation of the human race.

When, therefore, the child in an American school takes his first lesson in the local government of school district, township, county, or city he is mastering the materials out of which states are made, and becoming acquainted with the forces which act for the bringing of all the nations under the rule of just and equal laws. The American and Swiss method may be called the natural method for building the world state. It begins where the Greeks began, with the neighborhood state, which for a time was looked upon as complete in itself. Then, as the field of industrial and social interests became more extended, organs were created to fulfill the demands of these wider interests, leaving the neighborhoods in control of local matters. With each extension of industrial and political needs new organs are created to attend to them, always leaving to the governments of the smaller area the possession of powers already acquired. If new organs should be created to attend to the common interests of all the republics of the new world, each republic will still be left in essential control of all its local affairs. So also the world's Conference at The Hague may create effective organs for the enactment and enforcement of international law and still leave each particular nation in more secure possession of all its former privileges and powers. Americans take a lead

ing place in this method of forming the world state, because the very structure of their own government furnishes a training school in universal world politics. The Hague Tribunal was in an important sense an American product. It was proposed by Americans, and is itself a sort of transcript of the Supreme Court of the United States. If our courts may be relied upon to settle all disputes between forty-five American States, why may not a court at The Hague settle disputes arising between all the nations of the civilized world?

Professor ISAAC A. Loos:-Professor Macy's paper will be discussed by Professor Garver, of Morningside College.

Professor F. H. GARVER: I have listened with great interest to Professor Macy's paper. Ever since he issued, several years ago, his monograph entitled The Institutional Beginnings of a Western State, his utterances upon matters of political science have been received as authoritative.

Before proceeding farther, let me thank Professor Macy for his valuable paper and express a sense of the obligation under which he has placed this Conference for his contribution. I trust that nothing which I may say in