liberal England or absolutist Spain, they have shown a decided preference for the principles and practices of democracy. We cannot attribute it to a conscious determination, for over the vast area of the continent, with nations of unlike inheritance, we cannot reasonably presume uniformity of conscious purpose. We cannot, moreover, attribute it to any intelligent force, for the general features of national and continental life are not determined consciously, but by the action of forces which lie outside of the human will. The universal prevalence of democracy in America must, therefore, be referred in large measure to that equality of material conditions into which men are forced by the circumstances of frontier life. In an old society persons are maintained in relations of inequality as a consequence of social differentiation, supported by the direct provisions of law and the decrees of custom. But under the conditions which prevail where a wilderness is taken for civ ilization, and where the cultivation of the soil is the almost universal occupation, law is in its incipient stages, custom is silent,

and the restraining influence of social conventionalities is wanting. Under these conditions pretensions to superiority are seldom made, and if made would find little recognition.

The universal presence of the democratic spirit in American society finds an explanation in the suggestions already made concerning the conditions under which democ racy appears, and in the further fact that these conditions are the inevitable accompaniment of certain stages of colonial life. If these conditions and their influence are more marked in the English than in the Spanish colonies, the difference is due to the greater freedom from external governmental control which the English colonies enjoyed. These colonies were practically free, and took character from their environment. The English colonists generally acquired whatever amounts of land they could cultivate, and each in the cultivation of his land found himself essentially in the same position with respect to wealth, and living essentially the same kind of life, as his neighbor. When the necessity of organizing and

carrying on a local government presented itself, the obligation fell equally upon all members of the colony, and the govern ment which arose was a democracy by virtue of the material equality in which the colonists lived. The forces which made the English colonies in America democratic. were thus the same forces that developed and have maintained democracy in the forest cantons of Switzerland.

If the Spanish colonists have had a somewhat different history in this regard, it is because of the close relation that was maintained between them and the authorities of the mother country. From the foundation of the first Spanish settlements on this continent till the beginning of their strug gle for independence, the king of Spain held a strong hand over his American subjects. Every important feature of their life was prescribed by authority emanating from him. The movements of goods and the movements of persons were subject to a most arbitrary and far-reaching restriction. The political organization, from the lowest municipal corporation to the vice

royalty, was planned and constructed in Europe in accordance with European ideas, and the higher offices, almost without exception, were filled with persons of European birth and European education. To furnish an additional force to counteract the natural tendencies to democracy in Spanish America, the privileges and prestige of nobility were extended to conspicuous colonists. In view of these artificial restrictions and imported conventionalities, the native forces of colonial life worked slowly and against great odds. But when the war for the emancipation of Spanish America was ended, it was clearly seen that the forces which make for democracy had not been subdued, but that even during the domination of the Spanish king they had so far moulded the life of the Spanish colonists that after emancipation had been achieved no independent government was possible which did not rest on, and give ample recognition to, the democratic principle. Even the strong antidemocratic preferences of the great leaders, who had enjoyed a most extraordinary

popularity during the war, were inadequate to check or turn aside the current of democratic sentiment.

The English colonies furnished the best example of democracy in America, largely because they were to a greater extent than any other colonies moulded by local influences. The English government made little or no effort to restrain them by imposing upon them the legal and conventional forms and relations that had come into existence in an old and complex society. And they found themselves, moreover, under circumstances that favored the ownership and cultivation of land on a small scale, thus permitting each settler to become a proprietor and the peer of his neighbor; while in the Spanish settlements the system of encomiendas provided for inequality from the beginning, and thus set up a barrier that had to be broken down to make way for democratic progress.

The equality of material conditions presented by the colonial life of America has not only given a democratic basis to the republics of this continent, but it has