mind the fact that government is perpetually
undergoing modifications in adapting itself to new conditions.
Inasmuch as such gradual changes in government do not make themselves,
but are made by men--and made either for better or for worse--it is
obvious that the history of political institutions has serious lessons
to teach us. The student should as soon as possible come to understand
that every institution is the outgrowth of experiences. One probably
gets but little benefit from abstract definitions and axioms
concerning the rights of men and the nature of civil society, such as
we often find at the beginning of books on government. Metaphysical
generalizations are well enough in their place, but to start with such
things--as the French philosophers of the eighteenth century were fond
of doing--is to get the cart before the horse. It is better to have
our story first, and thus find out what government in its concrete
reality has been, and is. Then we may finish up with the metaphysics,
or do as I have done--leave it for somebody else.

I was advised to avoid the extremely systematic, intrusively
symmetrical, style of exposition, which is sometimes deemed
indispensable in a book of this sort. It was thought that students
would be more likely to become interested in the subject if it were
treated in the same informal manner into which one naturally falls in
giving lectures to young people. I have endeavoured to bear this in
mind without sacrificing that lucidity in the arrangement of topics
which is always the supreme consideration. For many years I have been
in the habit of lecturing on history to college students in different
parts of the United States, to young ladies in private schools, and
occasionally to the pupils in high and normal schools, and in writing
this little book I have imagined an audience of these earnest and
intelligent young friends gathered before me.

I was especially advised--by my friend, Mr. James MacAlister,
superintendent of schools in Philadelphia, for whose judgment I have
the highest respect--to make it a _little_ book, less than three
hundred pages in length, if possible. Teachers and pupils do not have
time enough to deal properly with large treatises. Brevity, therefore,
is golden. A concise manual is the desideratum, touching lightly upon
the various points, bringing out their relationships distinctly, and
referring to more elaborate treatises, monographs, and documents, for
the use