Webster was one of these men. He was the product of the forces which had been at work in the country from the earliest days. English freedom, which had forced its ways to these shores, had grown and increased under the fostering care of self-government and native industry. He had been born and brought up in a New England country village, the type of the freest and most determinate local government; he had been educated at a democratic college; he had shouldered his musket in a war for the defense not of his State alone, but of his country, vague and ill defined though its organic form might be. When, therefore, the war was over, and the country was free and compelled to manage its own affairs, he was qualified to take part in that management, and his temper led him to look for fundamental grounds of conduct. His "Sketches of American Policy" thus interests us as the political thinking of a young American, of lively disposition, candid mind, and rash confidence. It could not help being a reflection of other literature and thought; but its best character is in its sturdy and resolute assertion of English freedom as requiring a central authority in which to rest. It is curious, in the opening pages, to see how, in his theories of government, he is led away by the popular and alluring philosophy of Rousseau and Rousseau's interpreter, Jefferson. When he undertakes to explain the rationale of government he is a young man, captivated by the current mode; when he reaches the immediate, practical duty he is an Englishman, speaking to the point, and lighting upon the one unanswerable demand of American political life at the time. In the earlier pages of his "Sketches" he lays down his Theory of Government, which is, in brief, that of the _contrat social_, but presented in a homely form, which brings it nearer to the actual life of men; he concludes his observation with a definition of the most perfect practicable system of government as "a government where the right of _making_ laws is vested in the greatest number of individuals, and the power of _executing_ them in the smallest number." "In large communities," he adds, "the individuals are too numerous to assemble for the purpose of legislation: for which reason, the people appear by substitutes or agents,--persons of their own choice. A representative democracy seems, therefore, to be the most perfect system of government that is practicable on earth." He finds no such government on the Continent of Europe, or in history; but when he comes to America he views with satisfaction a state of things which renders possible the actual fulfillment of his ideal. "America, just beginning to exist, has the science and the experience of all nations to direct her in forming plans of government." There is an equal distribution of landed property, freed from the laws of entail and primogeniture; there is no standing army, and there is freedom from ecclesiastical tyranny; education is