itical ideas must prevail in the struggle for life. Moral
significance of the rapid increase of the English race in America.
Fallacy of the notion that centralized governments are needed for very
large nations. It is only through federalism, combined with local
self-government, that the stability of so huge an aggregate as the
United States can be permanently maintained. What the American
government really fought for in the late Civil War. Magnitude of the
results achieved. Unprecedented military strength shown by this most
pacific and industrial of peoples. Improbability of any future attempt
to break up the Federal Union. Stupendous future of the English
race,--in Africa, in Australia, and in the islands of the Pacific
Ocean. Future of the English language. Probable further adoption of
federalism. Probable effects upon Europe of industrial competition with
the United States: impossibility of keeping up the present military
armaments. The States of Europe will be forced, by pressure of
circumstances, into some kind of federal union. A similar process will
go on until the whole of mankind shall constitute a single political
body, and warfare shall disappear forever from the face of the earth.

AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS.

I.

_THE TOWN-MEETING._

The traveller from the Old World, who has a few weeks at his disposal
for a visit to the United States, usually passes straight from one to
another of our principal cities, such as Boston, New York, Washington,
or Chicago, stopping for a day or two perhaps at Niagara Falls,--or,
perhaps, after traversing a distance like that which separates England
from Mesopotamia, reaches the vast table-lands of the Far West and
inspects their interesting fauna of antelopes and buffaloes, red Indians
and Mormons. In a journey of this sort one gets a very superficial view
of the peculiarities, physical and social, which characterize the
different portions of our country; and in this there is nothing to
complain of, since the knowledge gained in a vacation-journey cannot
well be expected to be thorough or profound. The traveller, however,
who should visit the United States in a more leisurely way, with the
purpose of increasing his knowledge of history and politics, would find
it well to proceed somewhat differently. He would find himself richly
repaid for a sojourn in some insignificant place the very name of which
is unknown beyond sea,--just as Mr. Mackenzie Wallace--whose