Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/18

 viii which made in two hundred years an absolute distinction between Americans and Europeans, between American habits and European habits, between American government and European government, between the commercial customs and methods of one continent and those of the other.

Under the feudal system which obtained in Europe, the king, or emperor, or other sovereign, had certain relations with the nobility which were definitely understood. They constituted the basis of legislation, of ceremony, and of domestic life. Similar conditions existed in the intercourse between these noblemen and the next class, which in England was the class of land holders who held under their noblemen and as superior to vassals, not to say serfs. The distinction between four and five and six classes was as much established at law as is the distinction between the captain of a ship and a seaman before the mast. It was no mere matter of title—duke, marquis, baron, baronet, sir, Mr., goodman—the people in one of those classes had certain rights, so-called, which the people in "lower classes" did not have.

All this fell off and went to the winds as soon as the duties and necessities of the new settlement called upon all the settlers. If they were attacked by Indians in a frontier village, everybody had to join in the defense. Everybody must have a gun; he must have so much powder and so many yards of match and everybody must turn out at a moment's notice. This condition still exists virtually. Each State may and does call upon every man now to serve in the militia and when occasionally the national government chooses, it calls upon every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to go into service under a conscription. The reader of these lines does not perhaps know it, but if he shall be in the street when a house is on fire, the officer in charge of extinguishing the fire may order the reader to take a leading hose into an attic or to carry up the ladder to the roof tree—to do any duty connected with it, and the reader will have to obey.