American soil twelve centuries afterward. [Sidenote: Peculiarity of the Teutonic conquest of Britain] The century and a half between 449 and 597 is therefore one of the most important epochs in the history of the people that speak the English language. Before settling in Britain our forefathers had been tribes in the upper stages of barbarism; now they began the process of coalescence into a nation in which the principle of self-government should be retained and developed. The township and its town-meeting we find there, as later in New England. The county-meeting we also find, while the county is a little state in itself and not a mere administrative district. And in this county-meeting we may observe a singular feature, something never seen before in the world, something destined to work out vaster political results than Caesar ever dreamed of. This county-meeting is not a primary assembly; all the freemen from all the townships cannot leave their homes and their daily business to attend it. Nor is it merely an assembly of notables, attended by the most important men of the neighbourhood. It is a representative assembly, attended by select men from each township. We may see in it the germ of the British parliament and of the American congress, as indeed of all modern legislative bodies, for it is a most suggestive commentary upon what we are saying that in all other countries which have legislatures, they have been copied, within quite recent times, from English or American models. We can seldom if ever fix a date for the beginning of anything, and we can by no means fix a date for the beginning of representative assemblies in England. We can only say that where we first find traces of county organization, we find traces of representation. Clearly, if the English conquerors of Britain had left the framework of Roman institutions standing there, as it remained standing in Gaul, there would have been great danger of this principle of representation not surviving. It would most likely have been crushed in its callow infancy. The conquerors would insensibly have fallen into the Roman way of doing things, as they did in Gaul. [Sidenote: Survival and development of Teutonic representative assembly in England]