University and historical addresses, delivered during a residence in the United States as ambassador of Great Britain online

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UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL
ADDRESSES



DELIVERED DURING A RESIDENCE IN THE

UNITED STATES AS AMBASSADOR

OF GREAT BRITAIN




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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913

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COPYRIGHT, 1913,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1913.



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J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.



ELIHU ROOT

IN ADMIRATION AND FRIENDSHIP



PREFACE

DURING six years spent in Washington it has
been my duty, and also my pleasure, to travel hither
and thither over the United States, responding,
so far as time and strength permitted, to requests
to address Universities, Bar Associations, Chambers
of Commerce, and many other public organizations
of diverse kinds. Out of the many addresses deliv-
ered either to these bodies or in commemoration
of some person or event, I have selected a few,
the subjects of which seemed to possess a more
than passing interest, and of which I had happened
to keep notes, enabling the substance to be re-
produced. In revising them for publication some
additions have been made, while matters of a local
or purely occasional character have been omitted.
The audiences to which the academic addresses
were delivered consisted chiefly of undergraduate
or graduating students.

The enjoyment which I had derived from my
earlier visits to the United States was renewed and
enhanced by the warmth with which I found myself
received and by the encouragement given me to
speak on all non-political topics as freely as if I had
been a citizen of the United States.



viii PREFACE

I desire to take this opportunity of returning my
sincere thanks to those who, in the places where
these addresses were delivered, and in scores of
other cities which I have visited for the like pur-
pose, gave me that encouragement, and extended to
me a welcome the heartiness of which I can never
forget.

WASHINGTON,
April 20, 1913.



CONTENTS



PAGE

THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA i

WHAT UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTION MAY DO TO PROVIDE INTEL-
LECTUAL PLEASURES FOR LATER LIFE . . . 15
THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS IN 1620 33
THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL CHARACTER AND HISTORICAL
ENVIRONMENT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMON

LAW 41

THE CONDITIONS AND METHODS OF LEGISLATION ... 73
THOMAS JEFFERSON : THIRD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

AND FOUNDER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA . .107

MISSIONS PAST AND PRESENT 125

THE MISSION OF STATE UNIVERSITIES 151

THE ART OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 171

ARCHITECTURE AND HISTORY 181

THE CHARACTER AND CAREER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN . .197

THE SCOTO-IRISH RACE IN ULSTER AND IN AMERICA . . 205

WHAT A UNIVERSITY MAY DO FOR A STATE .... 227

ALLEGIANCE TO HUMANITY 247

THE TERCENTENARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 265

SOME HINTS ON PUBLIC SPEAKING 281

SPECIAL AND GENERAL EDUCATION IN UNIVERSITIES . . 299

THE STUDY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE 317

ON THE WRITING AND TEACHING OF HISTORY . . . 339

SOME HINTS ON READING 365

NATIONAL PARKS THE NEED OF THE FUTURE . . . 389

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES .... 407



THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND, VIRGINIA, APRIL 17,
1907, ON THE TERCENTENARY OF THE FIRST ENGLISH SETTLE-
MENT IN VIRGINIA.



UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL
ADDRESSES

THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND, VIRGINIA, APRIL 17,
1907, ON THE TERCENTENARY OF THE FIRST ENGLISH SETTLE-
MENT IN VIRGINIA.

ON this day three hundred years ago two small ships
and a pinnace coming from England by way of the
Canary Islands and the West Indies anchored here
and landed their passengers, being about one hundred
and twenty persons in number, upon this Island.
They came from London under a charter from the
King, James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland,
by which there was claimed for the Crown of England
the whole of North America between the thirty-fourth
and forty-fifth degrees of latitude, being the territory
then called Virginia. In the London which these set-
tlers had just left, Shakespeare was then living. Some
of them may have seen him, perhaps with Ben Jonson
beside him, watching the first performance of Hamlet
four or five years before. Sir Francis Bacon the one
name naturally suggests the other was living, though
not yet Lord Chancellor. Some of the emigrants may

3



4 UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

have heard him arguing cases in the courts. John
Milton was born the next year; Sir Walter Raleigh
was a man of fifty-five and then a prisoner in the Tower
of London ; Sir Philip Sidney had been killed at Zutphen
in 1586 and Edmund Spenser had died in 1599; Pym
was a youth of seventeen; John Hampden a boy of
seven ; Oliver Cromwell a boy of eight.

The England of those famous men was the England
whence the emigrants came, a land fitted to give
birth to large and noble enterprises. Measured by
what it did for the world, it was a great England,
with great poets, great thinkers, and strong men who
did great deeds. Never before and never since has
such a constellation of brilliant and memorable names
glittered in the English sky. But measured by popu-
lation, England was a little nation, though her states-
men and sailors had not long before won immortal
fame by their defeat of the Invincible Armada. There
were only some five million inhabitants in the country.
Ireland was still but half conquered, and Scotland,
though her King had lately inherited the English throne,
was a distinct and not too friendly kingdom. And
the settlers were few indeed to venture on the task of
occupying the vast continent on which they were
landing. How feeble must their enterprise have seemed
to the men of Spain, which held not only Mexico and
the immense territories north of Mexico, but also the
whole of South America and all the Antilles ! But
God had chosen the weak things of the world to con-



THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA 5

found the things which were mighty, and the things
which were not to bring to nought the things that were.
The Empire of Spain was to decay and dissolve and
vanish away, while from this spot, this islet two miles
long, where now we see nothing but a few moulder-
ing walls, the power of another race was to spread
out to the Alleghanies and beyond them to the Missis-
sippi, and thence to the Rocky Mountains and the far-
off coasts of the Pacific. The oak of English dominion
on the continent of North America lay hidden hi the
acorn that was planted on this island in the James
River, just as the germ of English dominion in the
East was to be found in the charter that had been
granted by 'Queen Elizabeth to the East India Company
seven years before this settlement.

The landing of these few men was one of the great
events in the history of the world an event to be com-
pared for its momentous consequences with the over-
throw of the Persian Empire^ by Alexander; with the
destruction of Carthage by Rome ; with the conquest of
Gaul by Clovis ; with the taking of Constantinople by
the Turks one might almost say with the discovery of
America by Columbus. Did any idea of the magni-
tude of this event rise in the minds of the little band
of settlers when they read their Royal charter on board
ship before landing; or when they held their first
religious service and set to the building of their fort,
a rude stockade called after the King, "James Town,"
and began to sow their fields with wheat, and build that



6 UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

tiny church which the pious care of this generation is
restoring ? There is nothing to show that they had any
such presentiments. Many a settlement tried before
upon the American coasts had failed since the half-
mythic and by that time long-forgotten landing
of Erik the Red in the far Northeast ; and they had
other things than the distant future to think of, for the
Spanish power to the south of them, though then nomi-
nally at peace, was jealous of their intrusion, and the
Indians around them were suspicious and hostile. But
of them it may be said that they, and those who sent
them forth from England, had the true spirit of practi-
cal men who saw the opportunity which a new country
offered to a growing people. They were of the stuff
which makes good settlers, and they did that which the
needs of the time required.

All the dangers and difficulties that were seen or
foreseen they overcame. The power of the mother
country kept them safe against the jealous bitterness
of Spain. They soon proved themselves able to repel
any attacks from the native Indians, and presently
ceased to fear these enemies, though they had for many
years to stand on guard against them. They suffered
so severely from malarial fevers, for in those days the
value of quinine as a remedy had not yet become known,
that after ninety-three years the colonial legislature
decided to remove itself from James Town island to
Williamsburg, eight miles to the northeast, and at last,
in 1780, the capital of Virginia was planted on the higher



THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA 7

and healthier ground of Richmond. But one mis-
take was committed, destined to breed troubles far
worse than any which Indians or sickness threatened.
Twelve years after the first settlement, a Dutch ship
landed a cargo of African negroes, the first that ever
came into the dominions of the English Crown. This
step a step taken with no prevision of all that was
to issue from it, and one for which the colonists them-
selves were not to blame established the system of
agricultural slave labor in North America, a system
which we can now see to have been, apart from the
other objections to it, uneconomic and unnecessary ; for
those who have studied, in the light of modern science,
the physical conditions of Virginia and the country south
and southwest of it, tell us that nearly all the area of the
States in which slavery existed seventy years ago, all, in
fact, except the hottest and dampest regions along the
coast, could be cultivated by the labour of white men.
The country would, no doubt, have been developed more
slowly, but there would have been no Civil War and
no race problems such as now occupy your thoughts.
Let it not be forgotten, however, that Virginia was the
first community in the world to recognize the evils
which the slave trade brought with it. Not only did
she, in colonial days, seek in vain to check or abolish it,
but in 1778, in the first years of her independence, when
both in England and in the Northern States powerful
interests were still defending and supporting the slave
trade, she absolutely forbade the bringing of any slaves



8 UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

into her territory. And you know how many of
the greatest Virginians, George Mason and Thomas
Jefferson among them, sought to rid their State of
slavery.

Let us, however, return to those first founders of
Virginia whom we are to-day commemorating. Of
the qualities that distinguished them, one, the spirit
of adventure, was common to them with many others
who had crossed the Western Sea. Think of Columbus
when he first showed the path that so many were to
follow ; of Magellan when he threaded his way through
the savage solitudes of the Strait that bears his name,
and traversed week after week and month after month,
with a crew part of which had lately been in mutiny
against him, hard-pressed by thirst and hunger and
scurvy, the seemingly boundless wastes of the unknown
Pacific. Think of Champlain and La Salle when they
found their way among fierce Indian tribes, through the
Northern forests or along the shores of the Great Lakes
as far as the Mississippi. For mere daring and self-
reliant hardihood no expedition has ever surpassed, if
indeed any has equalled, that of Hernando Cortez,
when after burning his ships he marched up far away
from the coast with a tiny band of cavaliers into the
heart of the vast and warlike dominion of the Aztecs.
But there was another quality in which our country-
men and your forefathers stood preeminent. They
came from a free country, though its freedom had not
yet been placed on a secure foundation, for that was



THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA 9

to be the work of the century that had just begun in
England; and the spirit of liberty and the love of
self-government glowed in their hearts.

Herein lay the great contrast between the English of
that day and the not less valiant adventurers who had
already gone forth from Spain. That the former went
to cultivate the soil and the latter primarily to win gold
and silver, whether by conquest or by the discovery
of mines, is a difference that has often been dwelt
upon. But the future fortunes of the two sets of emi-
grants were even more affected by the difference in
their political temper and ideas. The Englishmen,
though loyal to their sovereign at home, were not dis-
posed to acquiesce in the uncontrolled rule of his
deputies. They had a company to represent in Eng-
land their needs and wishes, and they soon set up in
the new land a system of local courts and assemblies,
modelled on the lines and principles of that which they
had left behind. They valued this inherited freedom,
and as the enjoyment of it had strengthened the charac-
ter and developed the independent and self-reliant spirit
of the individual citizen during three centuries in
England, so it began to do the same wholesome work
on these remote and silent shores.

Modern writers have speculated as to what was
the cargo that these three vessels carried. Of that we
know less than we could wish. Bibles and prayer-
books they certainly had, for they were God-fearing
men, and one of their prime objects was " the planting



io UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

of Christianity amongst heathens." Whether they
had any law books does not appear. But they carried
in their breasts the principles and traditions of the
common law of England, which of all the legal systems
that have ever been framed is the one most fully per-
vaded with the spirit of liberty and the most favorable
to the development of personal self-reliance and indi-
vidual responsibility. That spirit showed itself from
the first among the colonists of Virginia. They soon
organized their Assembly and began to govern them-
selves so far as the King allowed them. They were
well supported by the Virginia Company in London.
Its debates and the liberal tendencies it evinced caused
disquiet to the Court party and to the King, whose
shrewd and suspicious mind already noted the rising
of the wind which was to swell thirty-three years later
into the tempest of the great Civil War.

How the spirit of freedom and that assertion of
individual rights which the doctrines of the Common
Law favoured went on working through the annals of
colonial Virginia as in those of the great sister and rival
colony of Massachusetts ; how the same spirit prompted
Virginia's action when an unwise English Ministry,
ignorant of the circumstances and feelings of the colo-
nists, blundered into a conflict which ended in their
severance from England; how the greatest of all
Virginians, clarum et venerabile nomen, led his colony
and its fellow colonies in that conflict ; how the states-
manship of Virginia, matured by the experience of



THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA n

nearly two centuries, bore its part, and an eminently
useful part it was, in framing the Constitution of 1787,
and gave to the Union four out of its five first Presi-
dents; how one of Virginia's most illustrious sons,
Chief Justice Marshall, so expounded and developed the
Constitution as to become almost its second author,
- of all this I must not here and now attempt to
speak. Sixty years ago dark days descended upon
Virginia. The fatal error committed in early years,
from the consequences of which Virginia had vainly
sought to extricate herself, had now borne fatal fruit.
War came, with all the evils that war brings
in its train, and on Virginia those evils fell more
heavily than on any other State. Those were days of
unspeakable sadness and suffering, suffering borne
with the characteristic gallantry of Virginians, and
they produced in Robert E. Lee one of the finest
characters of that age, a man whose purity of heart
and loftiness of soul live in the revering memory not of
America only but of the world of English-speaking men.
But out of the storm there emerged a State delivered
from the blot of slavery, which has now regained its
old prosperity, and there emerged also a national
Republic more truly united than it ever was before.
The jealousies of States, the antagonism of North and
South, the rivalry of Virginia and Massachusetts, have
now happily vanished in a far vaster nation. The
Carolina of Calhoun and the Illinois of Lincoln can
both look back without bitterness on those Virginia



12 UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

battle-fields where Lee and Grant won undying fame.
The problems that occupy the thoughts of your people
and tax to the utmost the wisdom of your statesmen,
have, with one exception, that problem which slavery
bequeathed, nothing to do with geographical boundaries.
Never was there in this country so strong a sense that
whatever the future may have in store, the Federal
Union "an indestructible union of indestructible
States" must and will be preserved. It is guarded
not only by your national patriotism, but by nature
herself, who has made your land one from the Atlantic
to the Rocky Mountains, a land fit to be the home of
one undivided nation.

In this season of fair weather it is natural that your
eyes should look back across the sea to the ancient
Motherland, from whom you were for a time divided
by clouds of misunderstanding that have now melted
away into the blue. Between you and her there is
now an affection and a sympathy such as perhaps
there never was before in the days of your political
connection. To-day she rejoices with you in your
prosperity and your unity. She is proud of you, and
among her many achievements there is none of which
she is more proud than this, that she laid the foundation
of your vast and splendid Republic, giving you those
institutions under which, remodelled to suit your new
conditions and your extended area, your ninety millions
of people now live in peace in freedom.

You have asked me to say what England's message



THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA 13

to America would be on this three hundredth anniver-
sary of the birth of the American nation.

On the occasion of the opening of the Jamestown
Tercentenary Exposition a fortnight ago, I had the
honour of transmitting to the President of the United
States a greeting from the King and his Government
in the following words :

"On the occasion of the celebrations commemorating
the tercentenary of the foundation of the first English
settlement on the American continent at Jamestown
and the birth of the American nation, his Majesty's
Government wish to offer their warmest congratulations
to the United States Government on the magnificent
progress and development which have brought the
United States into the first rank among the greatest
nations of the world, not only in material prosperity,
but also in culture and peaceful civilization. The
connection which must ever exist in history between
the British and American nations will never be for-
gotten, and will contribute to increase and foster ties
of affection between the two peoples."

These words express the sentiment of the British
people, their sentiment of affection and of pride, of
pride in what you have done already, of hope for
what you may do in the future.

If any words were to be added in which Englishmen
who have reflected upon your history and their own
history would seek to convey their view of the teachings
of English and American experience, I would ask : Could



14 UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

the ancient Motherland with her recollections of four-
teen centuries of national life and seven centuries of
slow but steady constitutional development send to her
mighty daughter a better message than this ? " Cherish
alike and cherish together Liberty and Law. They are
always inseparable. Without liberty, there is no true
law, because where law expresses the will not of the
whole community, but merely of an arbitrary ruler or
a selfish class, it has neither moral force nor guarantee
of permanence. Without order and law duly enforced
and equal for all, there is no true liberty, for anarchy
means that the rights of the gentle and the weak are
overridden by the violent. In the union of ordered
liberty with a law gradually remoulded from age to age
to suit the changing needs of the people, has lain and
will always lie the progress and peace both of Britain
and of America."



WHAT UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTION MAY DO
TO PROVIDE INTELLECTUAL PLEASURES
FOR LATER LIFE

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, JUNE u,

1907.



WHAT UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTION MAY DO
TO PROVIDE INTELLECTUAL PLEASURES
FOR LATER LIFE

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, JUNE n,

1907.

YOUR University is placed in a wonderful city.
In the rapidity of its growth, in the expansion of its
trade and population, it has no parallel in the modern
world, not even in this Western world which has shown
so many new and startling phenomena. It owes its
prosperity, and it will owe that marvellous future to
which it looks forward, to two things. One is the
eager, ardent, restless spirit, keenly perceptive and
unweariedly active, of your people. The other is
modern science, which has made you the business
centre of the great Northwest and has enabled vast
industrial enterprises to be started all round the com-
mercial heart of your city. James Watt and the other
famous inventors who have followed him are the men
who have made such a city as Chicago possible. Your
people have turned the possibility into a reality. Two
great departments of human activity, production and
transportation, have been all over the world transformed
by science, and the effect of the change is felt in every
other department.

c 17



1 8 UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES

It must needs be felt in education also. Seventy
years ago applied science was hardly taught at all in
schools and universities, and theoretic science, except,
of course, mathematics, not at all in schools and but
little in universities. Now science has come to domi-
nate the field of education, and in some countries is
avenging herself for the contumely with which the
old-fashioned curriculum used to treat her by now
herself trying to relegate the study of language and
literature to a secondary place. Nothing could have
been more foolish than the way in which some old-
fashioned classical scholars used to look down upon
chemistry and physiology as vulgar subjects. But
any men of science who wish to treat literature or
history with a like arrogance will make just as great
a mistake.

In England there are some signs of this arrogance,
and it is becoming necessary to insist upon the impor-
tance of the human as opposed to the natural or scien-
tific subjects. Whether this is the case here also
you know better than I do. It need excite no surprise
that there should be a general rush at present towards
those branches of study which have most to promise
in the way of success in life. But I am glad to
know that in the greatest universities of America
ample provision is made for, and all due encouragement
is given to, the humanistic and literary subjects. As-
suming this to be so, assuming that for the purposes
of a general liberal education and also for the purpose



UNIVERSITIES AND INTELLECTUAL PLEASURE 19

of special preparation for the various professions and
occupations, all lines of study are here alike recognized
and efficiently taught, I pass to another aspect of
what university education may accomplish.

That which I ask you to join me in considering
is the value and helpfulness to the individual man of
scientific studies and of literary studies, respectively,
not for success in any occupation or profession, nor
for any other gainful purpose, but for what may be
called the enjoyment of h'fe after the days of univer-
sity education have ended.

All education has two sides. It is meant to impart
the knowledge, the skill, the habits of diligence and