The deliberations of the Federal Constitution are adequately recorded; and he gives fair relative recognition to the work and words of individuals, and the actions of State delegations in making the great adjustments between nation and States, between large and small and slave and free States.  From his account we infer that the New Jersey plan was intended by its authors only for temporary use in securing equality for the States in one essential part of the government, while the men from Connecticut receive credit for the compromise which reconciled nationality with true State rights.  Further to be noticed are the results of the exhaustive study which Bancroft gave to the matter of paper money, and to the meaning of the clause prohibiting the States from impairing the obligation of contracts.  He devotes nearly one hundred pages to ’The People of the States in Judgment on the Constitution,’ and rightly; for it is the final act of the separate States, and by it their individual wills are merged in the will of the people, which is one, though still politically distributed and active within State lines.  His summary of the main principles of the Constitution is excellent; and he concludes with a worthy sketch of the organization of the first Congress under the Constitution, and of the inauguration of Washington as President.

In this last portion of the ‘History,’ while all of his merits as a historian are not conspicuous, neither are some of his chief defects.  Here the tendency to philosophize, to marshal stately sentences, and to be discursive, is not so marked.

The first volume of Bancroft’s ‘History of the United States’ was published in 1834, when the democratic spirit was finding its first full expression under Jackson, and when John Marshall was finishing his mighty task of revealing to the people of the United States the strength that lay in their organic law.  As he put forth volume after volume at irregular intervals for fifty years, he in a measure continued this work of bringing to the exultant consciousness of the people the value of their possession of a continent of liberty and the realization of their responsibility.  In the course of another generation, portions of this ‘History of the United States’ may begin to grow antiquated, though the most brilliant of contemporary journalists quite recently placed it among the ten books indispensable to every American; but time cannot take away Bancroft’s good part in producing influences, which, however they may vary in form and force, will last throughout the nation’s life.

[Illustration:  Signature:  Austin Scott]

THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA

From ‘History of the United States’