Excerpt from The Rights and Duties of American Citizenship The purpose of the present work is to present to American youths practical information as to the rights and duties which attach to American citizenship. In the effort to do this in the clearest and most logical form, the stereotyped method of giving a running commentary upon the Constitution has been discarded. Of all political forms, the federal type is the most complex; and it is, therefore, little short of absurd to attempt, as do so many text-books on Civics, to explain to students who are without previous training the constitutional relations of our elaborate system of national, state, and local governments, without first giving to them a knowledge of the nature of political authority, the purposes for which it exists, and the general governmental means through which such purposes are attained. In the present work it is believed that this error has been avoided. The student is first given that information which is essential to an understanding of citizenship and government in general, before he is called upon to study the description of our own complex government in particular. This book is therefore divided into two parts. 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.