modification the barbarous races are to maintain their foothold upon the
earth at all. While once such people threatened the very continuance of
civilization, they now exist only on sufferance.

In this brief survey of the advancing frontier of European
civilization, I have said nothing about the danger that has from time to
time been threatened by the followers of Mohammed,--of the overthrow of
the Saracens in Gaul by the grandfather of Charles the Great, or their
overthrow at Constantinople by the image-breaking Leo, of the great
mediæval Crusades, or of the mischievous but futile career of the Turks.
For if I were to attempt to draw this outline with anything like
completeness, I should have no room left for the conclusion of my
argument. Considering my position thus far as sufficiently illustrated,
let us go on to contemplate for a moment some of the effects of all this
secular turmoil upon the political development of the progressive
nations of Europe. I think we may safely lay it down, as a large and
general rule, that all this prodigious warfare required to free the
civilized world from peril of barbarian attack served greatly to
increase the difficulty of solving the great initial problem of
civilization. In the first place, the turbulence thus arising was a
serious obstacle to the formation of closely-coherent political
aggregates; as we see exemplified in the terrible convulsions of the
fifth and sixth centuries, and again in the ascendency acquired by the
isolating features of feudalism between the time of Charles the Great
and the time of Louis VI. of France. In the second place, this
perpetual turbulence was a serious obstacle to the preservation of
popular liberties. It is a very difficult thing for a free people to
maintain its free, constitution if it has to keep perpetually fighting
for its life. The "one-man-power." less fit for, carrying on the
peaceful pursuits of life, is sure to be brought into the foreground in