The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce
he, too, understood there were surely lessons to be drawn for the benefit of the world, both in his day and in the unforeseeable future. In the end, his most abiding teachings, those still-relevant “philosophic views,” echo Tocqueville’s warnings about the problems and the prospects of the democratic age. “The more democratic republics become,” Bryce wrote, “the more the masses grow conscious of their own power, the more do they need to live, not only by patriotism, but by reverence and self-control, and the more essential to their well being are those sources whence reverence and self-control flow.” 70
IV
The American Commonwealth was not the totality of James Bryce’s life. He published ten other books and dozens of articles and reviews, and contributed numerous chapters to edited volumes on topics that ranged from the Ottoman Empire to the League of Nations. All the while he continued to travel the world and maintain a vigorous correspondence with the great and the good of his day.
Although he relinquished his chair of law at Oxford in 1893, Bryce’s political career continued unabated. In 1885 he stood again for Parliament, this time to represent South Aberdeen; he went on to represent that constituency for twenty-one uninterrupted years, standing down only when he became the British ambassador to the United States in 1906. He held that post until 1913. Upon his retirement from Washington, James Bryce became Viscount Bryce of Dechmont and entered the House of Lords, where he remained an active participant in the great debates of the day.
Of all Lord Bryce’s public accomplishments, none was perhaps as important as his service as ambassador to the nation he so loved. During his seven diplomatic years, Bryce built upon his great reputation and his legions of friends to pull the United States and the United Kingdom ever closer together.71 He never faltered in his belief that the Americans were, at heart and in their history, Englishmen. As such, the two nations had a natural attachment that set them apart from the rest of the world. The unity of their interests went beyond the expediency of the moment; they were linked at the deepest, most moral level of politics. They shared too much in common—law, literature, and religion—to be too long separated by the wedge of disagreement. By both his pen and his politics, James Bryce shored up the foundation of the “special relationship” between Britain and America that would see them through the calamitous twentieth century as the bastions of freedom.
James Bryce died quietly and unexpectedly in his sleep on January 22, 1922, in Sidmouth, Devon, where he and Marion, his wife of thirty-three years, had gone for a holiday. He was mourned in both London and Washington as a man unsurpassed in his devotion to democracy and liberty, ever guided by “the deep moral purpose which directed every thought and action of his life.” 72 He was buried next to his parents in the Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh. On October 12, 1922, a bronze bust of James Bryce was placed in the Capitol of the United States with an inscription that no doubt would have pleased him: “James, Viscount Bryce, Friend and Ambassador to the American People and Interpreter of their Institutions.”
Gary L. McDowell
Institute of United States Studies
University of London
The first edition of James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth appeared in 1888. It was published in London by Macmillan & Co. as a three-volume set and is the only edition of the book to be released in England. A two-volume edition of the work, using smaller type, was published at the same time in New York, and all subsequent editions have been limited to two volumes.
Two chapters in this first edition were written by Americans so that Bryce could obtain an American copyright (at that time the United States had not joined the International Copyright Union). Seth Low, a leader of the municipal reform movement and later president of Columbia University and mayor of New York, wrote chapter 52, “An American View of Municipal Government in the United States”; and Professor Frank J. Goodnow of Columbia University, a prominent political scientist and author of pioneer studies in the field of public administration, wrote chapter 88, “The Tweed Ring in New York City.”
In 1889, Macmillan reprinted the first edition but omitted the Goodnow chapter on the Tweed Ring because it had become the object of a libel suit. This chapter was also suppressed in the second edition of the work, which was published in 1893 with many revisions and additions. Bryce later rewrote the Goodnow chapter, however, and changed the title to “The Tammany Ring in New York City.” It was introduced in the extensively revised third edition published in 1910. But Bryce did not significantly alter the substance of this controversial chapter. He used every name that Goodnow had used and simply moderated the tone and updated the story.
The publisher heralded the 1910 edition as a “new edition completely revised throughout with additional chapters.” The changes were not as extensive as this suggests, but Bryce had added a great deal of new material since the first edition, including supplementary materials on political parties and amendments to the Constitution, and new chapters on American universities and colleges, immigration, the South since the Civil War, and what was then called “the Negro problem.” Seth Low also made modest revisions of his chapter on municipal government for the third edition.
In all of its essential attributes, the third edition published in 1910 represents Bryce’s final and most mature reflections on American institutions. In 1914, Bryce brought some statistics and the appendix up to date, and he apparently made a few additional minor corrections and additions before his death in 1922; but these changes did not significantly alter the work. Macmillan continued to publish the updated third edition in New York as late as 1941. The 1941 edition of The American Commonwealth, which encompasses all of the changes, corrections, and additions to the first three editions entered by Bryce, was used in the preparation of this new Liberty Fund edition.
In this new edition of Bryce’s classic, the reader will also note that the appendix has been expanded to include an essay by Bryce entitled “The Predictions of Hamilton and De Tocqueville” (originally published in 1887 by Johns Hopkins University) and two contemporaneous book reviews of The American Commonwealth, published in 1889, by Woodrow Wilson and Lord Acton, respectively.
Although capitalization and punctuation have been modernized for the convenience of the reader, Bryce’s style, including spelling and grammar, has been preserved intact. Footnotes and bracketed material are those of Bryce, except as otherwise noted.
As the introductory chapter of this work contains such explanations as seem needed of its scope and plan, the Author has little to do in this place except express his thanks to the numerous friends who have helped him with facts, opinions, and criticisms, or by the gift of books or pamphlets. Among these he is especially indebted to the Hon. Thomas M. Cooley, now Chairman of the Inter-State Commerce Commission in Washington; Mr. James B. Thayer of the Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass.; Hon. Seth Low, formerly Mayor of Brooklyn; Mr. Theodore Roosevelt of New York; Mr. G. Bradford of Cambridge, Mass.; and Mr. Theodore Bacon of Rochester, N.Y.; by one or other of whom the greater part of the proofs of these volumes have been read. He has also received valuable aid from Mr. Justice Holmes of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; Mr. Theodore Dwight, late Librarian of the State Department at Washington; Mr. H. Villard of New York; Dr. Albert Shaw of Minneapolis; Mr. Jesse Macy of Grinnell, Ia.; Mr. Simeon Baldwin and Dr. George P. Fisher of Newhaven, Conn.; Mr. Henry C. Lea of Philadelphia; Col. T. W. Higginson of Cambridge, Mass.; Mr. Bernard Moses of Berkeley, Cal.; Mr. A. B. Houghton of Corning, N.Y.; Mr. John Hay of Washington; Mr. Henry Hitchcock of St. Louis, Mo.; President James B. Angell of Ann Arbor, Mich.; Hon. Andrew D. White of Syracuse, N.Y.; Mr. Frank J. Goodnow of New York; Dr. Atherton of the State College, Pennsylvania; and the U.S. Bureau of Education. No one of these gentlemen is, however, responsible for any of the facts stated or views expressed in the book.
The Author is further indebted to Mr. Low and Mr. Goodnow for two chapters which they have written, and which contain, as he believes, matter of much interest relating to municipal government