Not only is a race which comes by sea likely to be peculiarly vigorous, self-reliant, and inclined, when settled, to political liberty, but the very process of maritime migration can scarcely fail to intensify the spirit of freedom and independence. Timon or Genghis Khan, sweeping on from land to land with the vast human herd under his sway, becomes more despotic as the herd grows larger by accretion, and the area of its conquests is increased. But a maritime migration is a number of little joint stock enterprises implying limited leadership, common counsels, and a good deal of equality among the adventurers. We see in fact that the Saxon immigration resulted in the foundation of a number of small communities which, though they were afterwards fused into seven or eight petty kingdoms and ultimately into one large kingdom, must, while they existed, have fostered habits of local independence and self-government. Maritime migration would also facilitate the transition from the tribe to the nation, because the ships could hardly be manned on purely tribal principles; the early Saxon communities in England appear in fact to have been semi-tribal, the local bond predominating over the tribal, though a name with a tribal termination is retained. Room would scarcely be found in the ships for a full proportion of women; the want would be supplied by taking the women of the conquered country; and thus tribal rules of exclusive intermarriage, and all barriers connected with them, would be broken down. Another obvious attribute of an island is freedom from invasion. The success of the Saxon invaders may be ascribed to the absence of strong resistance. The policy of Roman conquest, by disarming the natives, had destroyed their military character, as the policy of British conquest has done in India, where races which once fought hard against the invader under their native princes, such as the people of Mysore, are now wholly unwarlike. Anything like national unity, or power of co- operation against a foreign enemy, had at the same time been extirpated by a government which divided that it might command. The Northman in his turn owed his success partly to the want of unity among the Saxon principalities, partly and principally to the command of the sea which the Saxon usually abandoned to him, and which enabled him to choose his own point of attack, and to baffle the movements of the defenders. When Alfred built a fleet, the case was changed.