Interactive Object-Oriented Programming in Java: Learn and Test Your Programming Skills, 2nd Edition Vaskaran Sarcar pdf download
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Interactive
Object-Oriented
Programming in Java
Learn and Test Your
Programming Skills
Second Edition
Vaskaran Sarcar
Foreword by Avirup Mullick
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Interactive Object-Oriented Programming in Java
Vaskaran Sarcar
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
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Dear Reader,
You motivate me with your nice and loving comments,
you hurt me with your extremely critical comments, but in the
end you help me to become a better person and a better author.
So, this book is dedicated to you.
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Table of Contents
About the Author����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xix
About the Technical Reviewer��������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxi
Acknowledgments������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxiii
Preface������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxv
Who Is This Book For?������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxix
Guidelines for Using This Book�����������������������������������������������������������������������������xxxi
Conventions Used in This Book��������������������������������������������������������������������������xxxiii
Foreword�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxxv
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Table of Contents
Demonstration 2�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 19
Analysis��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 20
Demonstration 3�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 26
Demonstration 4�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 29
Demonstration 5�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31
Passing Variable-Length Arguments to Methods������������������������������������������������������������������������ 32
Demonstration 6�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 32
Analysis��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 33
Q&A Session�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 33
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 35
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Garbage Collection���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 54
Q&A Session�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 55
Demonstration 8�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 57
Finalization���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 60
Demonstration 9�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 61
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 63
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Chapter 6: Abstract Classes and Interfaces: The True Art in OOP������������������������ 141
Abstract Classes����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 141
Demonstration 1������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 142
Demonstration 2������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 143
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 146
Interfaces���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 151
Demonstration 3������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 153
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 154
Demonstration 4������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 155
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 156
Demonstration 5������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 157
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 158
Demonstration 6������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 158
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 160
Demonstration 7������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 160
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 163
Marker Interface����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 163
A Quick Tour with Annotations�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 164
Demonstration 8������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 165
Demonstration 9������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 169
Javadoc Snapshots������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 170
Q&A Session������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 171
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America, as to deny that weaknesses and dangers, and evils both
secret and public, do there abound. Those who base their judgments
less on knowledge of democratic forces than on obvious and
somewhat sentimental social prejudices are apt to look for the
dangers in the wrong direction. A German naturally thinks of mob-
rule, harangues of the demagogue, and every form of lawlessness
and violence. But true democracy does not allow of such things. A
people that allows itself to turn into a mob and to be guided by
irresponsible leaders, is not capable of directing itself. Self-direction
demands the education of the nation. And nowhere else in the world
is the mere demagogue so powerless, and nowhere does the
populace observe more exemplary order and self-discipline.
The essential weakness of such a democracy is rather the
importance it assigns to the average man with his petty opinions,
which are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, his total lack of
comprehension for all that is great and exceptional, his self-satisfied
dilettanteism and his complacency before the accredited and trite in
thought. This is far less true of a republic like the French, with its
genius for scepticism, a republic nourished in æsthetic traditions and
founded on the ruins of an empire. The intellectual conditions are
there quite different. But in an ethical democracy, where self-
direction is a serious issue, domination by the average intelligence is
inevitable; and those who are truly great are the ones who find no
scope for their powers. Those who appear great are merely men
who are exploiting to the utmost the tendencies of the day. There
are no great distinctions or premiums for truly high achievements
which do not immediately concern the average man, and therefore
the best energies of the nation are not spurred on to their keenest
activity. All ambition is directed necessarily toward such
achievements as the common man can understand and compete for
—athletic virtuosity and wealth. Therefore the spirit of sport and of
money-getting concerns the people more nearly than art or science,
and even in politics the domination of the majority easily crowds
from the arena those whose qualifications do not appeal to its
mediocre taste. And by as much as mature and capable minds
withdraw from political life, by so much are the well-intentioned
masses more easily led astray by sharp and self-interested politicians
and politics made to cater to mean instincts. In short, the danger is
not from any wild lawlessness, but from a crass philistinism. The
seditious demagogue who appeals to passion is less dangerous than
the sly political wire-puller who exploits the indolence and
indifference of the people; and evil intent is less to be feared than
dilettanteism and the intellectual limitations of the general public.
But, on the other hand, it is also certain that when it comes to a
critical comparison between the weaknesses and theoretical dangers
of democracy and aristocracy, the American is at no loss to serve up
a handsome list of shortcomings to the other side. He has observed
and, perhaps overestimating, he detests the spirit of caste, the
existence of those restrictions which wrongfully hamper one
individual and as undeservedly advantage another. Again, the
American hates bureaucracy and he hates militarism. The idea of
highest authority being vested in a man for any other reason than
that of his individual qualifications goes against all his convictions;
and his moral feeling knows no more detestable breed of man than
the incompetent aspirant who is servile with his superiors and brutal
to his inferiors. It is typically un-American. And if, in contrast to this,
one tries to do justice to the proved advantages of monarchy, of
aristocracy and the spirit of caste, to justify the ruler who stands
above the strife of parties, and to defend that system of symbols by
which the sentiment of the past is perpetuated in a people, and the
protection which is instituted for all the more ideal undertakings
which surpass the comprehension of the masses, or if one urges the
value of that high efficiency which can arise only from compact
political organization—then the American citizen swells with
contempt. What does he care for all that if he loses the inestimable
and infinite advantage which lies in the fact that in his state every
individual takes an active hand, assumes responsibility, and fights for
his own ideals? What outward brilliancy of achievement would
compensate him for that moral value of co-operation, initiative, self-
discipline, and responsibility, which the poorest and meanest citizen
enjoys? It may be that an enlightened and well-meaning monarch
sees to it that the least peasant can sit down to his chicken of a
Sunday; but God raised up the United States as an example to all
nations, that it shall be the privilege of every man to feel himself
responsible for his town, county, state, and country, and even for all
mankind, and by his own free initiative to work to better them. The
strife of parties would better be, than that a single man should be
dead to the welfare of his country; and it is good riddance to
aristocracy and plenty, if a single man is to be prevented from
emulating freely the highest that he knows or anywise detained from
his utmost accomplishment.
All such speculative estimates of different constitutional forms lead
to no result unless they take into account the facts of history. Every
side has its good and evil. And all such discussions are the less
productive in that superiorities of constitution, although soundly
argued, may or may not in any given country be fully made use of,
while on the other hand defects of constitution are very often
obviated. Indeed, to take an example from present tendencies in
America, nothing is more characteristic than the aristocratic by-
currents through which so many dangers of democracy are avoided.
Officially, of course, a republic must remain a democracy, otherwise
it mines its own foundations, and yet we shall see that American
social and political life have developed by no means along parallel
lines but rather stand out often in sharp contrast. The same is true
of Germany. Official Germany is aristocratic and monarchic through
and through, and no one would wish it other; but the intimate life of
Germany becomes every day more democratic, and thus the natural
weaknesses of an aristocracy are checked by irresistible social
counter-tendencies. It may have been the growing wealth of
Germany which raised the plane of life of the middle classes; or the
industrial advance which loaned greater importance to manufacturer
and merchant, and took some social gloss from the office-holding
class; it may have been the colonial expansion which broadened the
horizon and upset a stagnant equilibrium of stale opinion; or, again,
the renewed efforts of those who felt cramped and oppressed, the
labourers, and, above all, the women; it does not matter how it
arose—a wave of progress is sweeping over that country, and a
political aristocracy is being infused with new, democratic blood.
Now in America, as will often appear later, the days are over in
which all aristocratic tendencies were strictly held back. The
influence of intellectual leaders is increasing, art, science, and the
ideals of the upper classes are continually pushing to the front, and
even social lines and stratifications are beginning more and more to
be felt. The soul of the people is agitated by imperialistic and
military sentiments, and whereas in former times it was bent on
freeing the slaves it now discovers “the white man’s burden” to lie in
the subjugation of inferior races. The restrictions to immigration are
constantly being increased. Now of course all this does not a whit
prejudice the formal political democracy of the land; it is simply a
quiet, aristocratic complement to the inner workings of the
constitution.
The presence, and even the bare possibility, here, of such by-
currents, brings out more clearly how hopeless the theoretical
estimation of any isolated form of statehood is, if it neglects the
factors introduced by the actual life of the people. The American
democracy is not an abstractly superior system of which a European
can approve only by becoming himself a republican and
condemning, incidentally, his own form of government: it is rather,
merely, the necessary form of government for the types of men and
the conditions which are found here. And any educated American of
to-day fully realizes this. No theoretical hair-splitting will solve the
problem as to what is best for one or another country; for that true
historical insight is needed. And even when the histories of two
peoples are so utterly dissimilar as are those of America and
Germany, it by no means follows, as the social by-currents just
mentioned show, that the real spirit of the peoples must be unlike.
Democratic America, with its unofficial aristocratic leanings, has, in
fact, a surprising kinship to monarchical Germany, with its inner
workings of a true democracy. The two peoples are growing into
strong resemblance, although their respective constitutions flourish
and take deeper root.
The beginnings of American history showed unmistakably and
imperatively that the government of the American people must be,
in the words of Lincoln, “a government of the people, by the people,
and for the people.” No one dreamed when the Constitution of the
United States was framed, some hundred and seventeen years ago,
that this democratic instrument would ever be called on to bind
together a mighty nation extending from Maine to California. And,
indeed, such a territorial expansion would undoubtedly have
stretched and burst the unifying bonds of this Constitution, if the
distance between Boston and San Francisco had not meanwhile
become practically shorter than the road from Boston to Washington
was in those early days. But that this Constitution could so adapt
itself to the undreamt broadening of conditions, that it could
continue to be the mainstay of a people that was indefinitely
extending itself by exchange and purchase, conquest and treaty, and
that in no crisis has an individual or party succeeded in any
tampering with the rights of the people; all this shows convincingly
that the American form of state was not arbitrarily hit on, but that it
was the outcome of an historical development.
The spirit of this commonwealth was not first conceived in the year
1787. It was strong and ripe long before the delegates from the
Thirteen States assembled under Washington’s leadership in
Independence Hall at Philadelphia. The history of the English
colonists to the Atlantic coast shows from the very first what weight
they attached to the duties and rights of the individual, and foretells
as well the inevitable result, their unloosing from the mother country
and final declaration of their independence.
We may consider the different lines of development which began
early in the seventeenth century, after the feeble attempts at
colonization from England, France and Spain in the latter half of the
sixteenth century had miscarried and left socially no traces. French
settlements flourished as early as 1605, chiefly however in Nova
Scotia and other parts of Canada, and in 1609 settlements of Dutch,
whose colony on the Hudson River, the present New York, soon
passed over into English hands. The development of the Spanish
colonies on the Gulf of Mexico went on outside the territory of these
young United States; and so the story of the meagre years of
America is comprised in the history of the English colonies alone.
These colonies began diversely but came to resemble one another
more and more as time went on. There can be no greater contrast
than between the pioneer life of stout-willed men, who have left
their native soil in order to live in undisturbed enjoyment of their
Puritan faith, seeking to found their little communities on simple
forms of self-government, and on the other hand the occupation of a
rich trading company under royal charter, or the inauguration of a
colony of the crown. But these differences could not be preserved.
The tiny independent communities, as they grew in consideration,
felt the need of some protecting power and therefore they looked
once more to England; while, on the other hand, the more powerful,
chartered colonies tended to loose themselves from the mother
country, feeling, as they soon did, that their interests could not be
well administered from across a broad ocean. In spite of the
protecting arm of England, they felt it to be a condition of their
sound growth that they should manage their domestic affairs for
themselves. Thus it happened that all the colonies alike were
externally dependent on England, while internally they were
independent and were being schooled in citizenship.
The desire for self-government as a factor in the transformations
which went on can very easily be traced; but it would be harder to
say how far utilitarian and how far moral factors entered in. Virginia
took the first step. Its first settlement of 1606 was completely
subject to the king, who granted homesteads but no political rights
to the colonists. It was a lifeless undertaking until 1609, when its
political status was changed. The administration of the colony was
entrusted to those who were interested in its material success. It
became a great business undertaking which had everything in its
favour. At the head was a London company, which for a nominal sum
had been allowed to purchase a strip of land having four hundred
miles of seacoast and extending inland indefinitely. This land
contained inestimable natural resources, but needed labour to
exploit them. The company then offered to grant homes on very
favourable terms to settlers, receiving in return either cash or
labour; and these inducements, together with the economic pressure
felt by the lower classes at home, brought about a rapid growth of
the colony. Now since this colony was organized like a military
despotism, whose ruler, however, was no less than three thousand
miles away, the interests of the company had to be represented by
officials delegated to live in the colony. The interests of these
officials were of course never those of the colonists, and presently,
moreover, unscrupulous officials commenced to misuse their power;
so that as a result, while the colony flourished, the company was on
the brink of failure. The only way out of this difficulty was to
concede something to the colonists themselves, and harmonize their
interests with those of the company by granting them the free
direction of their own affairs. It was arranged that every village or
small city should be a political unit and as such should send two
delegates to a convention which sat to deliberate all matters of
common concern. This body met for the first time in 1619; and in a
short time it happened, as was to be expected, that the local
government felt itself to be stronger than the mercantile company
back in London. Disputes arose, and before five years the company
had ceased to exist, and Virginia became a royal province. But the
fact remained that in the year 1619 for the first time a deliberative
body representing the people had met on American soil. The first
step toward freedom had been taken. And with subtle irony fate
decreed that in this same year of grace a Dutch ship should land the
first cargo of African negroes in the same colony, as slaves.
That other form of political development, which started in the
voluntary compact of men who owned no other allegiance, was first
exemplified in the covenant of those hundred and two Puritans who
landed from the Mayflower at Plymouth, in the year 1620, having
forsaken England in order to enjoy religious freedom in the New
World. A storm forced them to land on Cape Cod, where they
remained and amid the severest hardships built up their little colony,
which, as no other, has been a perpetual spring of moral force. Even
to-day the best men of the land derive their strength from the moral
courage and earnestness of life of the Pilgrims. Before they landed
they signed a compact, in which they declared that they had made
this voyage “for ye glory of God and advancement of ye Christian
faith, and honour of our King and countrie,” and that now in the
sight of God they would “combine ... togeather into a civil body
politik for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of ye
end aforesaid, and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute and frame
such just and equal lawes, ordinances, actes, constitutions and
offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and
convenient for ye generall good of ye colonie.”
The executive was a governor and his assistants, elected annually
from the people: while the power to make laws remained with the
body of male communicants of the church. And so it remained for
eighteen years, until the growth of the colony made it hard for all
church-members to meet together, so that a simple system of
popular representation by election had to be introduced. This colony
united later with a flourishing trading settlement, which centred
about Salem; and these together formed the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, which in 1640 numbered already twenty thousand souls.
The covenant which was drawn up on board the Mayflower is to be
accounted the first voluntary federation of independent Americans
for the purposes of orderly government. The first written constitution
was drawn up in the colony of Connecticut, a colony which repeated
essentially the successful experiments of New Plymouth, and which
consisted of agricultural settlements and small posts for trading with
the Indians situated at Windsor and Hartford and other places along
the Connecticut Valley. Led by common interests, they adopted in
1638 a formal constitution.
There was still a third important type of colonial government, which
was at first thoroughly aristocratic and English, and nevertheless
became quickly Americanized. It was the custom of the King to grant
to distinguished men, under provision of a small tribute, almost
monarchical rights over large tracts of land. The first such man was
Lord Baltimore, who received in 1632 a title to the domain of
Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. He enjoyed the most complete
princely prerogatives, and pledged to the crown in return about a
fifth part of the gold and silver mined in his province. In 1664
Charles the Second gave to his brother, the Duke of York, a large
territory, which was soon broken up, and which included what are
now known as the States of Vermont, New Jersey, and Delaware.
The great provinces of Georgia and Carolina—now North and South
Carolina—were awarded by the same King to one of his admirals, Sir
William Penn, for certain services. Penn died, and his son, who found
himself in need of the sixteen thousand pounds which his father had
loaned to the King, gratified that monarch by accepting in their stead
a stretch of coast lands extending between the fortieth and forty-
third degrees of latitude.
In this way extensive districts were turned over to the caprice of a
few noblemen; but immediately the spirit of self-direction took
everywhere root, and a social-political enthusiasm proceeded to
shape the land according to new ideals. Carolina took counsel of the
philosopher, Locke, in carrying out her experiment. Maryland, which
was immediately prospered with two hundred men of property and
rank, chiefly of Roman Catholic faith, started out with a general
popular assembly, and soon went over to the representative system.
And Penn’s constructive handiwork, the Quaker State of
Pennsylvania, was intended from the first to be “a consecrated
experiment.” Penn himself explained that he should take care so to
arrange the politics of his colony that neither he himself nor his
successors should have an opportunity to do wrong. Penn’s
enthusiasm awoke response from the continent: he himself founded
the “city of brotherly love,” Philadelphia; and Franz Daniel Pastorius
brought over his colony of Mennonites, the first German settlers,
who took up their abode at Germantown.
Thus it was that the spirit of self-reliant and self-assertive
independence took root in the most various soils. But that which led
the colonies to unite was not their common sentiments and
ambitions, but it was their common enemies. In spite of the
similarity of their positions there was no lack of sharp contrasts. And
perhaps the most striking of these was the opposition between the
southern colonies, with their languid climate, where the planters left
all the work to slaves, and the middle and northern provinces, where
the citizens found in work the inspiration of their lives. The foes
which bound together these diverse elements were the Indians, the
French, the Spanish, and lastly their parent race, the English.
The Indian had been lord of the land until he was driven back by the
colonists to remoter hunting territory. The more warlike tribes tried
repeatedly to wipe out the white intruder, and constantly menaced
the isolated settlements, which were by no means a match for them.
Soon after the first serious conflict in 1636, the Pequot war, Rhode
Island, which was a small colony of scattered settlements, made
overtures toward a protective alliance with her stronger neighbours.
In this she was successful, and together with Massachusetts,
Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, formed the United Colonies
of New England. This union was of little practical importance except
as a first lesson to the colonies to avoid petty jealousies and to
consider a closer mutual alliance as a possibility which would by no
means impair the freedom and independence of the uniting parties.
The wars with the French colonies had more serious consequences.
The French, who were the natural enemies of all English
settlements, had originally planted colonies only in the far north, in
Quebec in 1608. But during those decades in which the English
wayfarers were making homes for themselves along the Atlantic
coast, the French were migrating down from the north through the
valley of the Saint Lawrence and along the Great Lakes to the
Mississippi River. Then they pressed on down this stream to its
mouth and laid title to the tremendous tracts which it drains, in the
name of the French crown. This country they called after King Louis
XIV, Louisiana. They had not come as colonists, but solely with an
eye to gain, hoping to exploit these untouched resources in behalf of
the Canadian fur traffic; and close on the heels of the trader came
the Catholic priest. Thus the territory that flanked the English
colonies to inland fell into French hands, whereas the land-grants of
the English crown so read that only the Pacific Ocean should be the
western boundary. A collision was therefore inevitable, although
indeed mountains and virgin forests separated the coastland
settlements from the inland regions of the Mississippi where the
French had planted and fortified their trading posts.
When, in 1689, war broke out in Europe between England and
France, a fierce struggle began between their representatives in the
New World. But it was not now as it had been in the Indian war,
where only a couple of colonies were involved. All the colonies along
the coast were threatened by a common enemy. A congress of
delegates convened at New York in April of 1690, in which for the
first time all the colonies were invited to take part. Three long wars
followed. The greatest advantage on the French side was that from
the first they had been on good terms with the Indians, whose aid
they were now able to enlist. But the French were numerically weak,
and received but little assistance from their mother country. When in
1766 the last great war broke out the English colonies had a
population of a million and a quarter, while the French had only a
tenth as many. Chiefly and finally, the English colonists were actual
settlers, hardened and matured through carrying the responsibilities
of their young state, and fighting for hearth and home; the French
were either traders or soldiers. The principle of free government was
destined on this continent to triumph. Washington, then a young
man, led the fight; the English Secretary of State, William Pitt, did
everything in his power to aid; and the victory was complete. By the
treaty of 1763 all French possessions east of the Mississippi were
given to England, with the exception of New Orleans, which,
together with the French possessions west of the Mississippi, went
to Spain. Spain meanwhile ceded Florida to England. Thus the entire
continent was divided between England and Spain.
But the Seven Years War had not merely altered the map of
America; it had been an instructive lesson to the colonists. They had
learned that their fortunes were one; that their own generals and
soldiers were not inferior to any which England could send over; and
lastly, they had come to see that England looked at the affairs of the
colonies strictly from the point of view of her own gain. Herewith
was opened up a new prospect for the future: the French no longer
threatened and everything this side of the Mississippi stood open to
them and promised huge resources. What need had they to depend
further on the English throne? The spirit of self-direction could now
consistently come forward and dictate the last move.
It is true that the colonists were still faithful English subjects, and in
spite of their independent ambitions they took it for granted that
England would always direct their foreign policy, would have the
right to veto such laws as they passed, and that the English
governors would always be recognized as official authorities. But
now the English Parliament planned certain taxations that were the
occasion of serious dispute. The Thirteen Colonies, which in the
meantime had grown to be a population of two million, had by their
considerable war expenditures shown to the debt-encumbered
Britons the thriving condition of colonial trade. And the latter were
soon ready with a plan to lay a part of the public taxation on the
Americans. It was not in itself unfair to demand of the colonies some
contribution to the public treasury, since many of the expenditures
were distinctly for their benefit; and yet it must have seemed
extraordinary to these men who had been forced from childhood to
shift for themselves, and who believed the doctrine of self-
government to be incontrovertible. They objected to paying taxes to
a Parliament in which they had no representation; and the phrase,
“no taxation without representation,” became the motto of the hour.
The Stamp Tax, which prescribed the use of revenue stamps on all
American documents and newspapers, was received with
consternation, and societies called the Sons of Freedom were formed
throughout the land to agitate against this innovation. The Stamp
Tax Congress, which met in New York in 1765, repudiated the law in
outspoken terms. Nor did it halt with a mere expression of opinion;
the spirit of self-direction was not to be molested with impunity.
Close on the resolve not to observe the law, came the further
agreement to buy no English merchandise. England had to waive the
Stamp Tax, but endless mutterings and recriminations followed
which increased the bitterness. Both sides were ripe for war when,
in 1770, England issued a proclamation laying a tax on all tea
imported to the colonies. The citizens of Boston became enraged
and pitched an English ship-load of tea into the harbour. Thereupon
England, equally aroused, proceeded to punish Boston by passing
measures designed to ruin the commerce of Boston and indeed all
Massachusetts. The Thirteen Colonies took sides with Massachusetts
and a storm became imminent. The first battle was fought on the
19th of April, 1775; and on July 4th, 1776, the Thirteen Colonies
declared their independence of England. Henceforth there were to
be no colonies but in their place thirteen free states.
The Declaration of Independence was composed by Jefferson, a
Virginian, and is a remarkable document. The spirit that informs it is
found in the following lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed....” The sins of the English king
and people against America are enumerated at length, and in
solemn language the United States of America are declared
independent of the English people, who are henceforth to be as “the
rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.” This Declaration
was signed by delegates from the states in Independence Hall, in
Philadelphia, where hung the famous bell, with its inscription,
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants
thereof.”
The spirit of self-direction had triumphed; but the dangers were by
no means wholly passed. England sent over no more governors, and
had indeed been repulsed; but she had as yet no intention of giving
in. The war dragged on for five long years, and the outcome was
uncertain until in 1781 Cornwallis was brought to surrender. Then
England knew that she had lost the contest. The king desired still to
prolong the war, but the people were tired of it and, the ministry
having finally to yield, peace was declared in April of the year 1783.
This was no assurance of an harmonious future, however. That
solidarity which the colonies had felt in the face of a common enemy
now gave way to petty jealousies and oppositions, and the inner
weakness of the new Union was revealed. In itself the Union had no
legal authority over the several states, and while during the war the
affairs of the country had fallen into disorder, yet the Union had no
power to conduct foreign diplomacy or even to collect customs.
It was rather in their zeal for self-direction that at first considerable
portions of the population seemed disinclined to enlarge the
authority of the central organization. Self-direction begins with the
individual or some group of individuals. The true self-direction of
society as a whole was not to be allowed to encroach on the rights
of the individual, and this was the danger feared. Each state, with its
separate interests and powers, would not give up its autonomy in
favour of an impersonal central power which might easily come to
tyrannize over the single state in much the same way as the hated
English throne had done. And yet the best men of the country were
brought at length more and more to the opposite view; a strong
central authority, in which the states as a whole should become a
larger self-directing unit, carrying out and ensuring the self-direction
of the component members, was seen to be a necessity. Another
congress of representatives from all the states was convened in
Independence Hall, at Philadelphia, and this body of uncommonly
able men sat for months deliberating ways by which the opposing
factions of federalism and anti-federalism could be brought together
in a satisfactory alliance. It was obvious that compromises would
have to be made. So, for instance, it was conceded that the smallest
state, like the largest, should be represented in the senate by two
delegates: and the single state enjoyed many other rights not usual
in a federation. But, on the other hand, it was equally certain that
the chief executive must be a single man with a firm will, and that
this office must be refilled at frequent intervals by a popular election.
A few had tentatively suggested making Washington king, but he
stood firm against any such plan. The republican form of
government was in this instance no shrewdly devised system which
was adopted for the sake of nicely spun theoretical advantages—it
was the necessity of the time and place, the natural culmination of a
whole movement. It was as absolutely necessary as the
consolidation of the German states, eighty years later, under an
imperial crown. The congress eventually submitted a constitutional
project to the several state legislatures, for their summary approval
or rejection. Whereon the anti-federalistic factions made a final
effort, but were outvoted, and the Constitution was adopted. In
1789 George Washington was elected the first president of the
United States.
It would take a lively partisan to assert, as one sometimes does, that
this Constitution is the greatest achievement of human intellect, and
yet the severest critics have acknowledged that a genius for
statesmanship is displayed in its text. Penned in an age which was
given over to bombastic declamation, this document lays down the
fundamental lines of the new government with great clearness and
simplicity. “We, the people of the United States,” it begins, “in order
to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.” This is the entire introduction. The contents
come under seven articles. The first article provides for the making
of laws, this power to be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate
and House of Representatives; for the business and daily routine of
this Congress, as well as its powers and obligations. The second
article provides for the executive power, to be vested in the person
of the President, who is elected every fourth year; the third article
provides for a judiciary; the fourth defines the mutual relations of
separate states; and the last three articles concern the adoption of
the Constitution and the conditions under which it may be amended.
The need of amendments and extensions to this Constitution was
foreseen and provided for. How profoundly the original document
comprehended and expressed the genius of the American people
may be seen from the fact that during a century which saw an
unexampled growth of the country and an undreamed-of
transformation of its foreign policy, not a single great principle of the
Constitution was modified. After seventy-seven years one important
paragraph was added, prohibiting slavery; and this change was
made at a tremendous cost of blood. Otherwise the few
amendments have been insignificant and concerned matters of
expediency or else, and more specially, further formulations of what,
according to American conceptions, are the rights of the individual.
Although the original Constitution did not contain a formal
proclamation of religious freedom, freedom of speech, of the press,
and of public assemblage, this was not because those who signed
the document did not believe in these things, but because they had
not aimed to make of the Constitution of the Union either a treatise
on ethics or yet a book of law. But as early as 1789 the states
insisted that all the rights of the individual, as endorsed by the
national ideals, should be incorporated in the articles of this
document. In the year 1870 one more tardy straggler was added to
the list of human rights, the last amendment; the right of the
citizens to vote was not to be abridged on account of race, colour, or
previous condition of servitude.
Of the other amendments, the tenth had been tacitly assumed from
the first year of the Republic; this was that “The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by
it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.” This principle also was surely in no way at variance with the
spirit of the original document. It was, indeed, the lever that
ensured the great efficacy of the Constitution, so that by its
provisions the centrifugal forces were never disturbed by centripetal
ones; an equilibrium was effected between the tendencies that made
for unity and those that made against it, in such a way that the
highest efficiency was ensured to the whole while the fullest
encouragement was given to the enterprise and initiative of the
parts. In no direction, probably, would an improvement have been
possible. More authority concentrated at the head would have
impeded general activity, and less would have lost the advantages of
concerted action; in neither case would material growth or the
reconciliation of conflicting opinions have been possible. Constant
compensation of old forces and the quickening of new ones were the
secret of this documented power, and yet it was only the complete
expression of the spirit of self-direction, which demands
unremittingly that the nation as a whole shall conduct itself without
encroaching on the freedom of the individual, and that the individual
shall be free to go his own ways without interfering with the
unfettered policy of the nation.
Under the auspices of this Constitution the country waxed and
throve. As early as 1803 its land area was doubled by the accession
of Louisiana, which had been ceded by Spain to France, and was
now purchased from Napoleon for fifteen million dollars—an event of
such far-reaching importance that the people of St. Louis have not
inappropriately invited the nations of the earth to participate in a
Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In 1845 Texas was taken into the
Union, it having broken away from Mexico just previously and
constituted itself an independent state. The large region on the
Pacific slope known as Oregon came in 1846 to the United States by
treaty with England, and when finally, in 1847, after the war with
Mexico, New Mexico and California became the spoils of the victor
and in 1867 Russia relinquished Alaska, the domain of the country
was found to have grown from its original size of 324,000 square
miles to one of 3,600,000. The thirteen states had become forty-five,
since the newly acquired lands had to be divided. But all this growth
brought no alteration in the Constitution, whose spirit of self-
direction, rather, had led to this magnificent development, had
fortified and secured the country, and inspired it with energy and
contentment. The population also has grown under this benevolent
Constitution. Millions have flocked hither to seek and to find
prosperity on this new and inexhaustible soil. The area has increased
tenfold, but the population twenty-fold; and the newcomers have
been disciplined in the school of self-direction and educated to the
spirit of American citizenship.