_Causes of this Inferiority._--In explanation of this circumstance various conjectures have been advanced. Indubitably, the proscription of the Loyalists after the war deprived the thirteen States of wealth and intelligence which might otherwise have afforded to American literature an American support. But the effect upon letters of that social loss is easily exaggerated. The promptness with which serious English books were reprinted in America, even in the years when, as Goodrich discovered, it was “positively injurious to the commercial credit of a bookseller to undertake American works,” proves sufficiently that a reading public still remained. Another reason why, in the earlier years of our national life, there were few historians, may be found in the exaggerated value which most Americans then set upon certain abstract and therefore absolute theories in politics. Among the leaders of the Anti-Federalist or Democratic party, especially, a sort of political orthodoxy grew up. Theirs became a party with a creed, but without a programme. In the Southern States, they developed, in defence of their principles, an extensive literature of political and economic theory, far surpassing in variety of argument, subtlety of reasoning, and clearness of exposition anything that the North could show. But throughout it all, they appealed for support to the unchanging text of written constitutions, or to the immemorial prescriptions of natural law; upon history they looked as a tedious tale of ignorance and error. The Federalists, on the other hand, like the Whigs and the Republicans who succeeded them, were a party rather of measures than of principles. For their practical aims, a knowledge of human experience was serviceable. They inclined, therefore, to historical studies, and it is in New England, where their hold had been strongest, that the most significant of American historians at length appear. But even the stoutest Federalist among the contemporaries of Jefferson could discern in the recent experience of the nation at large little to stimulate patriotic ardour. In the estimation of men as yet unaccustomed to “think continentally,” the new government had brought few blessings: its burdens seemed innumerable. Taxes were high. Money was bad, and scarce as well. The Revolution had loosened the bonds of traditional authority, and internal disorder was rife. The mutual obligations assumed by England and by the United States at the Peace of 1783 were disregarded on both sides; and a new treaty, whose stipulations the vast majority of Americans deemed humiliating to themselves and dishonourable towards their French allies, served chiefly to prolong internal dissensions by introducing as an unwelcome issue in American politics the conflicting sympathies of the Federalists with England and of the Democrats with France. What wonder, then, that those who concerned themselves with the history of