Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. THE LIFE AND EPOCH. IJ774.] /ETAT. 17. CHAPTER V. [i774.] It was in truth an Epoch. Many things had been engendered which, in other days and other lands, gave birth to great arguments and noble deeds. It saw established the Episcopal order in America, and the minds of the colonists reconciled to its introduction ? it influenced the origin, but not the crimes of the French Revolution ? it began the argument which ended in the restoration of the trial by jury in cases of criminal prosecution for libel; and initiated the moral force which, overcoming the prejudices and law enactments of centuries, emancipated the Catholics of Ireland. The social and political history of those times, which preceded, and by a series of evolving events developed, the revolutionary spirit which brought about the separation of the American colonies from the crown of England has, in its controversial literary phases, yet to be written. When written it will discover to practical statesmen sources of political wisdom which, in our present days of vague impulse and unpropor- tioned thought, should not willingly be neglected. It was, as we have said before,1 an epoch in which the civil law regained for a time its liberal dominion over the minds of a race of intelligent men. It was an epoch in which the undying principles of the ancient Saxon constitution of Alfred were restored, and became the foundation of a new form of government: reestablishing that ancient heritage for the children of his ancient race. Men were taught again to look beyond the Magna Charta for the fresh well-springs of their inalienable, absolute rights, and for the regulations of an orderly liberty, ? were reminded that liberty itself was better understood and more fully enjoyed by their ancestors before the...