Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/12

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN experiments were conducted were not the same. One struggle had for its theatre a small island, the other half a continent; between the one struggle and the other two centuries elapsed, during which time institutions founded on the same basis developed in different directions, and two different forms of society grew up from the same root. So the later struggle took a different shape from the earlier one, and raised new problems.

In the political causes of the two struggles there is a certain resemblance. In each case the formal cause of the quarrel was the question of sovereignty. In America the question was, What share of sovereignty rightly belonged to individual States and what to the Federal government? In England the question was, What share of sovereignty rightly belonged to the King, and what to the Parliament? Some would put the problem differently, and say that it was a question which of two partners was the real sovereign. In America the issue was less simple than it 4