Their religion, after 150 years, was exchanged for Christianity. Time
softened their manners and habits, and mingled new elements with their
speech. But the Anglo-Saxon _nature_ has defied the centuries and
change. _A strong sense of justice_, and a _resolute resistance
to encroachments upon personal liberty_, are the warp and woof of
Anglo-Saxon character yesterday, to-day and forever. The steady
insistence of these traits has been making English History for
precisely 1,400 years, (from 495 to 1895,) and the history of the
Anglo-Saxon race in America for 200 years as well.

Our ancestors brought with them from their native land a simple, just,
Teutonic structure of society and government, the base of which was the
_individual free-man_. The family was considered the social unit.
Several families near together made a township, the affairs of the
township being settled by the male freeholders, who met together to
determine by conference what should be done.

This was the germ of the "town-meeting" and of popular government. In
the "witan," or "wise men," who were chosen as advisers and adjusters
of difficult questions, exist the future legislature and judiciary,
while in the king, or "alder-mann" ("Ealdorman") we see not an
oppressor, but one who by superior age and experience is fitted to
lead. Cerdic, first Saxon king, was simply Cerdic the "Ealdorman" or
"Alder-mann."

They were a free people from the beginning. They had never bowed the
neck to yoke, their heads had never bent to tyranny. Better far was it
that Roman civilization, built upon Keltic-Briton foundation, should
have been effaced utterly, and that this strong untamed humanity, even