Excerpt from Sources of the Constitution of the United States Considered in Relation to Colonial and English History Merica is sometimes said to be a nation without a past. The remark may mean much or little, according to its application. It is made most frequently in referring to civil institutions. In particular, there has been a tendency to regard the Constitution of the United States as without sources or antecedents, new invention in political science. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Presents 80 documents selected to reflect Eric Voegelin's theory that in Western civilization basic political symbolizations tend to be variants of the original symbolization of Judeo-Christian religious tradition. These documents demonstrate the continuity of symbols preceding the writing of the Constitution and all contain a number of basic symbols such as: a constitution as higher law, popular sovereignty, legislative supremacy, the deliberative process, and a virtuous people. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Excerpt from Sources of the Constitution of the United States Considered in Relation to Colonial and English History America is sometimes said to be a nation without a past. The remark may mean much or little, according to its application. It is made most frequently in referring to civil institutions. In particular, there has been a tendency to regard the Constitution of the United States as without sources or antecedents, - a new invention in political science. Mr. Gladstone has observed, that "as the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." His words, though not necessarily carrying such meaning, have been often quoted as expressive of this old-time idea, that the American Constitution is wholly new, - that it is, in fact, an original creation of the convention which met in Philadelphia in 1787. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Spanning both the history of the modern West and his own five-decade journey as a historian, Gerald Stourzh’s sweeping new essay collection covers the same breadth of topics that has characterized his career—from Benjamin Franklin to Gustav Mahler, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Charles Beard, from the notion of constitution in seventeenth-century England to the concept of neutrality in twentieth-century Austria. This storied career brought him in the 1950s from the University of Vienna to the University of Chicago—of which he draws a brilliant picture—and later took him to Berlin and eventually back to Austria. One of the few prominent scholars equally at home with U.S. history and the history of central Europe, Stourzh has informed these geographically diverse experiences and subjects with the overarching themes of his scholarly achievement: the comparative study of liberal constitutionalism and the struggle for equal rights at the core of Western notions of free government. Composed between 1953 and 2005 and including a new autobiographical essay written especially for this volume, From Vienna to Chicago and Back will delight Stourzh fans, attract new admirers, and make an important contribution to transatlantic history.