These peoples do not really have
revolutions. What we call the American Revolution was only the
reaffirming of principles which were as precious in the eyes of most
Englishmen as they were in the eyes of Washington, Hamilton, and
Madison, but which had been for a time and owing to peculiar
circumstances, neglected or contravened. Political development in this
family of nations does not, he maintains, proceed by revolution, but by
evolution. On all these points his _Constitutional Government in the
United States_ is only a richer and more mature statement and
illustration of the ideas expressed in his _Congressional Government_.
The main thesis of his _George Washington_ is that the great Virginian
and first American was the truest Englishman of his time, a modern
Hampden or Eliot, a Burke in action. Again and again he pays respect to
Chief Justice Marshall, who represented, in our early history, the
conception of law as something in its breadth and majesty older and more
sacred than the decrees of any particular legislature, and yet capable
of being so interpreted as to accommodate itself to progress. Mr. Wilson
has from the beginning been an admiring student of Burke.
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