first and about the easiest of the victims of the French Revolution. Its case is a striking example of the hollowness of material prosperity when it is not accompanied by governmental efficiency. Just before the collapse of the republic it seemed to be the richest country in the world. In 1789 the Bank of Amsterdam held 3,000 tons of gold. State securities paying 2 per cent stood at 110 in the money market. But in 1810 the government was bankrupt and the Bank of Amsterdam was in liquidation. The people made a rapid descent from opulence to misery and want.1

In these convulsions the primitive polity theory perished never to be revived. After the Napoleonic wars were over, the country was reconstituted as a kingdom with the son of the last stadtholder on the throne as King William I. The politics of modern Holland date from the Napoleonic period, and the present structure of authority bears the impress of the national experience during that period. The old particularism is suppressed, national sovereignty is effectively embodied in a legislature composed of the executive in conjunction with the parliament, while executive power belongs exclusively to the crown. The success of the present constitutional

1 J. E. Barker, The Rise and Decline of the Netherlands gives many details of the progress of industrial decay.

system in safeguarding the integrity of the nation during a war cycle of even more than Napoleonic violence, is in striking contrast with the experience of the old republic.

Although it was only in the Dutch republic that any distinct formulation of the primitive polity theory was observable as a motive force in politics, yet tendencies in the same direction were noticeable throughout Europe as an incident of the great romantic movement started by Rousseau. The force of this movement has extended to our own times, but since the Napoleonic era it has belonged rather to literary history than to politics. Realism and not sentiment has in the main presided over political arrangements. It was in England,- the only country in Europe that escaped revolution in its social and civic polity from the vast upheavals during the period 1789-1848, that the Teutonic theory found a favorable climate and obtained an exuberant growth.

CHAPTER V

THE THEORY IN ENGLAND:

ITS START

It was inevitable that the interest in primitive conditions inspired by the return to nature championed by the romantic movement in literature should produce some effect upon history. The romantic movement itself may be said to be a recasting of social values upon a naturalistic basis, and this tended to discredit the classic moulds which the eighteenth century historians had used. The romantic spirit caused a great revival of interest in early literature in its supposed character as a product of the close communion with nature in which people lived before the complications of government and art had overlaid and suppressed the original simplicity of human existence. For a considerable period the most famous book in Europe was that containing the poems of Ossian, published from 1761 to 1765 by a Scotch schoolmaster, James MacPherson, who pretended that he had collected them from oral tradition. Napoleon Bonaparte's copy of Ossian is still extant, with his marking of favorite passages, and smelling of snuff and

patchouli. The founder of the present royal house of Sweden was named after one of Ossian's characters, Oscar, which has ever since been perpetuated in the family.1

But while imaginative literature was steeped in admiration of primitive social conditions, the historical literature of the period portrayed those conditions as rude, coarse, stupid and disorderly. The situation naturally prompted a re-examination of the historical evidence, and colossal labor in this direction produced Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons. Its volumes which appeared from 1799 to 1805, at once sprang into fame because of the new light in which they exhibited the barbarians, of whose character and institutions the older school of historians had made such slighting estimate.

Sharon Turner (1768-1847) was a London attorney who devoted all his spare time to study of the Anglo-Saxon period. He was the first to examine thoroughly the collection of AngloSaxon manuscripts in the British Museum. Examination of his works inspires one with admiration for his vast erudition mingled with amazement at the credulity of his attitude towards the myths handed down by the medieval chroniclers. He labored for sixteen years before

1 J. S. Smart, James Macpherson, gives a vivid account of the immense vogue obtained by the poems of Ossian.

he produced his first volume. His huge collection of material and the elaborate dissertations in which he digested and arranged that material so as to cover every phase of political and social conditions in Anglo-Saxon times, first gave scientific character to historical knowledge of that period. The debt which scholarship owes to him is singularly large. A striking feature of the work, particularly in view of the romantic impulse that initiated it, is the cool, commonsense estimate of values which he displayed in discussing the Anglo-Saxon literary relics disinterred by his heroic industry. His critical judgments remind one of those of Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose literary influence probably had considerable effect upon Turner's style. The following passage seems to bear the marks of Johnson's critical method:

"The barren and peculiar state of the AngloSaxon poetry leads us to infer that it was the product of art more than nature. Its origin seems to have been as homely as its genius The origin of the periphrasis is easily accounted for; a favorite chief or hero conquers, and is received on his return by the clamorous rejoicings of his people. One calls him brave; another, fierce; another, irresistible. He is pleased with the praises; and some one at his feast, full of the popular feeling, repeats the various epithets with which he had been greeted: