Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/18

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN subject to the kingdom of Scotland, or the kingdom of Ireland, for the bringing in of the King ." Thus the conflict for self-government developed into a struggle for national independence, and ended in the attainment of national unity. Yet the attainment was temporary only; the union of the three kingdoms lasted but seven years, and it was not permanently achieved till 140 years later.

Here we see the two conflicts producing similar results, though in one case the result was incidental, and in the other it was the thing fought for from the beginning. Both in the English and American conflict there were causes of discord which lay deeper than the avowed reasons for fighting, and made the quarrel irreconcilable. In England the purely political question about which the war began might have been settled without a war if it had not been for the religious difficulty for the demand of the Puritans for ecclesiastical changes. Their 10