hinderances that have ordinarily been so obstructive in the history of
civilization. Hence we not only see why, after the Norman Conquest had
operated to increase its unity and its strength, England enjoyed a far
greater amount of security and was far more peaceful than any other
country in Europe; but we also see why society never assumed the
military type in England which it assumed upon the continent; we see how
it was that the bonds of feudalism were far looser here than elsewhere,
and therefore how it happened that nowhere else was the condition of the
common people so good politically. We now begin to see, moreover, how
thoroughly Professor Stubbs and Mr. Freeman are justified in insisting
upon the fact that the political institutions of the Germans of Tacitus
have had a more normal and uninterrupted development in England than
anywhere else. Nowhere, indeed, in the whole history of the human race,
can we point to such a well-rounded and unbroken continuity of political
life as we find in the thousand years of English history that have
elapsed since the victory of William the Norman at Senlac. In England
the free government of the primitive Aryans has been to this day
uninterruptedly maintained, though everywhere lost or seriously impaired
on the continent of Europe, except in remote Scandinavia and impregnable
Switzerland. But obviously, if in the conflict of ages between
civilization and barbarism England had occupied such an inferior
strategic position as that occupied by Hungary or Poland or Spain, if
her territory had been liable once or twice in a century to be overrun
by fanatical Saracens or beastly Mongols, no such remarkable and quite
exceptional result could have been achieved. Having duly fathomed the
significance of this strategic position of the English race while
confined within the limits of the British islands, we are now prepared
to consider the significance of the stupendous expansion of the English
race which first became possible through the discovery and settlement of
North America. I said, at the close of my first lecture, that the