31. Name all the political divisions from the smallest to the greatest in which you live. A Cambridge (Mass.) boy might, for example, say, "I live in the third precinct of the first ward, in the first Middlesex representative district, the third Middlesex senatorial district, the third councillor district, and the fifth congressional district. My city is Cambridge; my county, Middlesex, etc." Name the various persons who represent you in these several districts.
32. May state and local officers exercise authority on United States government territory, as, for example, within the limits of an arsenal or a custom-house? May national government officers exercise authority in states and towns?
33. What is a sovereign state? Is New York a sovereign state? the United States? the Dominion of Canada? Great Britain? Explain.
34. When sovereign nations disagree, how can a settlement be effected? What is the best way to settle such a disagreement? Illustrate from history the methods of negotiation, of arbitration, and of war.
35. When two states of the Federal Union disagree, what solution of the difficulty is possible?
* * * * *
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
THE FEDERAL UNION.—For the origin of our federal constitution, see Bancroft's History of the United States, final edition, vol. vi., N.Y., 1886; Curtis's History of the Constitution, 2 vols., N.Y., 1861, new edition, vol. i., 1889; and my Critical Period of American History, Boston, 1888, with copious references in the bibliographical note at the end. Once more we may refer advantageously to J.H.U. Studies, II., v.-vi., H.C. Adams, Taxation in the United States, 1789-1816; VIII, i.-ii., A.W. Small, The Beginnings of American Nationality. See also Jameson's Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States in the Formative Period, 1775-1789, Boston, 1889, a very valuable book.
On the progress toward union during the colonial period, see especially
Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, Boston, 1872;
also Scott's Development of Constitutional Liberty in the English
Colonies of America, N.Y., 1882.
By far the ablest and most thorough book on the government of the United States that has ever been published is Bryce's American Commonwealth, 2 vols., London and N.Y., 1888. No American citizen's education is properly completed until he has read the whole of it carefully. In connection therewith, the work of Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols., 6th ed., Boston, 1876, is interesting. The Scotchman describes and discusses the American commonwealth of to-day, the Frenchman that of sixty years ago. There is an instructive difference in the methods of the two writers, Tocqueville being inclined to draw deductions from ingenious generalizations and to explain as natural results of democracy sundry American characteristics that require a different explanation. His great work is admirably reviewed and criticised by Bryce, in the J.H.U. Studies, V., ix., The Predictions of Hamilton and De Tocqueville.