By far the ablest and most thorough book on the government of the United States that has ever been published is Bryce’s American Commonwealth, 2 vols., London and N.Y., 1888.  No American citizen’s education is properly completed until he has read the whole of it carefully.  In connection therewith, the work of Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols., 6th ed., Boston, 1876, is interesting.  The Scotchman describes and discusses the American commonwealth of to-day, the Frenchman that of sixty years ago.  There is an instructive difference in the methods of the two writers, Tocqueville being inclined to draw deductions from ingenious generalizations and to explain as natural results of democracy sundry American characteristics that require a different explanation.  His great work is admirably reviewed and criticised by Bryce, in the J.H.U.  Studies, V., ix., The Predictions of Hamilton and De Tocqueville.

The following manuals may be recommended:  Thorpe, The Government of the People of the United States, Phila., 1889; Martin’s Text Book on Civil Government in the United States, N.Y. and Chicago, 1875 (written with special reference to Massachusetts); Northam’s Manual of Civil Government, Syracuse, 1887 (written with special reference to New York); Ford’s American Citizen’s Manual, N.Y., 1887; Rupert’s Guide to the Study of the History and the Constitution of the United States, Boston, 1888; Andrews’s Manual of the Constitution of the United States, Cincinnati, 1874; Miss Dawes, How we are Governed, Boston, 1888; Macy, Our Government:  How it Grew, What it Does, and How it Does it, Boston, 1887.  The last is especially good, and mingles narrative with exposition in an unusually interesting way.  Nordhoff’s Politics for Young Americans, N.Y., 1887, is a book that ought to be read by all young Americans for its robust and sound political philosophy.  It is suitable for boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years old.  C.F.  Dole’s The Citizen and the Neighbour, Boston, 1887, is a suggestive and stimulating little book.  For a comparative survey of governmental institutions, ancient and modern, see Woodrow Wilson’s The State:  Elements of Historical and Practical Politics, Boston, 1889.  An enormous mass of matter is compressed into this volume, and, although it inevitably suffers somewhat from extreme condensation, it is so treated as to be both readable and instructive.  The chapter on The State and Federal Governments of the United States has been published separately, and makes a convenient little volume of 131 pages.  Teachers should find much help in MacAlister’s Syllabus of a Course of Elementary Instruction in United States History and Civil Government, Phila., 1887.