"For Wordsworth, as for Burke, local attachment is "the tap-root of the tree of Patriotism". That was particularly true of the part of England from which Wordsworth himself came—the dales of Cumberland and Westmorland, with their tiny scattered communities of "statesmen" as they were called, small independent owner-farmers, soon, alas, to be driven out of existence as such by the increasing prosperity of the country. "Neither high-born nobleman, knight, nor esquire, was here; but many of these humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land, which they walked over and tilled, had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of their name and blood." This is the environment out of which Wordsworth's political theory springs; and along with local patriotism it taught him the meaning of tradition in a nation's life. He draws his conclusions in phrases that wonderfully, and surely not accidentally, echo Burke. "There is a spiritual community binding together the living and the dead, the good, the brave, and the wise, of all ages." To Wordsworth, as to Burke, tradition is essential to a nation. How well he knew "the solemn fraternity which a great Nation composes—gathered together, in a stormy season, under the shade of ancestral feeling". He cries, as the shadow of Napoleon looms over his mind, "Perdition to the Tyrant who would wantonly cut off an independent nation from its inheritance in past ages"."