Feudalism is founded upon physical force, and therefore bears a relation to the past alone. Right begins in might, and all the social relations of men have originated in physical superiority. The most prevalent ideas of the feudal period arise out of the past; what has been longest honoured is held most honourable; and the understanding of men, unexercised by learning, and undisciplined by society and political action, falls back upon precedent, and reposes there. The tastes, and even the passions, of the feudal period bear a relation to antiquity. Ambition, prospective as it is in its very nature, has, in this case, a strong retrospective character. The glory that the descendant derives from his fathers, he burns to transmit. The past is everything: the future, except in as far as it may resemble the past, is nothing. Such, with modifications, have been the prevalent ideas, tastes, and passions of the civilized world, till lately. The opposite state of society, which has begun to be realized, occasions prevalent ideas, and therefore prevalent virtues and vices, of an opposite character. As commerce enlarges, as other professions besides the clerical arise, as trades become profitable, as cities swell in importance, as communication improves, raising villages into towns, and hamlets into villages, and the affairs of central communities become spread through the circumference, the lower classes rise, the chiefs lose much of their importance, the value of men for their intrinsic qualifications is discovered, and such men take the lead in managing the affairs of associated citizens. Instead of all being done by orders issued from a central power,--commands carrying forth an imperious will, and bringing back undoubting obedience,--social affairs begin to be managed by the heads and hands of the parties immediately interested. Self-government in municipal affairs takes place; and, having taken place in any one set of circumstances, it appears likely to be employed within a wider and a wider range, till all the government of the community is of that character. The United States are the most remarkable examples now before the world of the reverse of the feudal system,--its principles, its methods, its virtues and vices. In as far as the Americans revert, in ideas and tastes, to the past, this may be attributed to the transition being not yet perfected,--to the generation which organized the republic having been educated amidst the remains of feudalism. There are still Americans who boast of ancestors high in the order of birth rather than of merit; who in talking of rank have ideas of birth in their minds, and whose tastes lie in the past. But such will be the case while the literature of the world breathes the spirit of former ages, and softens the transition to an opposite social state. A new literature, new modes of thought, are daily arising, which point more and more towards the future.