Heptarchy

Yeah, this is an issue which I've had a lot of thoughts about over the years and have kind of changed my mind from where I've been, I guess, maybe a decade or so ago before I started the podcast.

I kind of see it now more in the fact that If you look back at England and you look back at the Heptarchy and the invasion of the Vikings and then kind of where they are just before the conquest, they are by no means a united area either, and they have the exact same problems.

Like, if you look at the writings of Bede when he's talking about things, he's not necessarily talking about the English people as a single people.

He's talking about them from the aspect of Northumbria and everybody else.

Immediately opposite, a vehicle of strange description had come to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.

It was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse drill, till then unknown in its modern shape in this part of the country, where the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days of the Heptarchy.

Its arrival created about as much sensation in the corn market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross.

The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it.

Such a constitution would gradually annihilate the small states, and finally melt down the whole United States into one undivided sovereignty.

The free states of Spain and the Heptarchy in England afford striking examples of this.

should it be said that such an event is desirable i answer the states are all entitled to their respective sovereignties and while they claim independence in internal jurisdiction the federal constitution ought to guarantee their sovereignty two another consideration has weight there is in all nations a tendency towards an accumulation of power in some point it is the business of the legislator to establish some barriers to check that tendency in small societies a man worth one hundred thousand pounds sterling has but one vote when his neighbors who are worth but fifty pounds have each one vote likewise to make property the sole basis of authority would expose many of the best citizens to violence and oppression to make the number of inhabitants in a state the rule of apportioning power is more imputable, and where the United States' one indivisible interest would be a perfect rule for representation.

But the detached situation of the states has created some separate interests, some local institutions which they will not resign nor throw into the hands of other states.

We stand up for self-governance and oppose centralisation.

In short, you would like the Heptarchy back again.

Well, at any rate, I revoke what I said this morning, that you Milton people do not reverence the past.

You are regular worshippers of Thor.