The State Author:Woodrow Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. The scope and plan of this volume I need not explain; they are, I trust, self-evident; but a word or two of comment and suggestion I would fain addre... more »ss to those who may use the book in class instruction. In preparing it I labored under the disadvantage of having had no predecessors. So far as I have been able to ascertain, no text-book of like scope and purpose has hitherto been attempted. I was obliged, therefore, to put a great deal into this volume that I might have omitted had there been other compact and easily accessible statements of the details of modern governmental machinery. Had there been other books to which the student might easily resort for additional information, I should have confined myself much more than I have felt at liberty to do to the discussion of general principles and the elaboration of parallels or contrasts between different systems. As it was, I saw no way of doing adequately the work I had planned without putting in a great deal of detail. The book, as a consequence, is very large. Realizing this, I have put a great deal of matter, containing minor details and most of my illustrations and parallels, into small print, in order that any part of such matter that the teacher saw fit to omit in class work might be omitted without breaking the continuity of the text. At the same time, the small print paragraphs are integral parts of the text, not separated from it as foot-notes would be, but running along with it as continuously as if they were in no way distinguished from the main body of it. In the historical portions I have been greatly straitened for space and must depend upon the active and intelligent assistance of the teacher. Picking out governmental facts, as I have done, from the body of political history, and taking for grante...« less