interests of a people have a very questionable influence upon individual happiness; while provincial interests produce a most immediate effect upon the welfare of the inhabitants. The Union secures the independence and the greatness of the nation, which do not immediately affect private citizens; but the several States maintain the liberty, regulate the rights, protect the fortune, and secure the life and the whole future prosperity of every citizen. The Federal Government is very far removed from its subjects, while the provincial Governments are within the reach of them all, and are ready to attend to the smallest appeal. The central Government has upon its side the passions of a few superior men who aspire to conduct it; but upon the side of the provincial Governments are the interests of all those second-rate individuals who can only hope to obtain power within their own State, and who nevertheless exercise the largest share of authority over the people because they are placed nearest to its level. The Americans have therefore much more to hope and to fear from the States than from the Union; and, in conformity with the natural tendency of the human mind, they are more likely to attach themselves to the former than to the latter. In this respect their habits and feelings harmonize with their interests. When a compact nation divides its sovereignty, and adopts a confederate form of government, the traditions, the customs, and the manners of the people are for a long time at variance with their legislation; and the former tend to give a degree of influence to the central government which the latter forbids. When a number of confederate States unite to form a single nation, the same causes operate in an opposite direction. I have no doubt that if France were to become a confederate republic like that of the United States, the Government would at first display more energy than that of the Union; and if the Union were to alter its constitution to a monarchy like that of France, I think that the American Government would be a long time in acquiring the force which now rules the latter nation. When the national existence of the Anglo-Americans began, their provincial existence was al ready of long standing; necessary relations were established between the townships and the individual citizens of the same States; and they were accustomed to consider some objects as common to them all, and to conduct other affairs as exclusively relating to their own special in terests. The Union is a vast body, which presents no definite object to patriotic feeling. The forms and limits of the State are distinct and cir. cumscribed; since it represents a certain number of objects which are familiar to the citizens and beloved by all. It is identified with the very soil, with the right of property and the domestic affections, with the recollections of the past, the labors of the present, and the hopes of the future. Patriotism, then, which is frequently a mere extension of individual egotism, is still directed to the State, and is not excited by the Union. Thus the tendency of the interests, the habits, and the feelings of the people is to centre political activity in the States, in preference to the Union. It is easy to estimate the different forces of the two governments, by remarking the manner in which they fulfil their respective functions. Whenever the Government of a State has occasion to address an indi. vidual or an assembly of individuals, its language is clear and imperative; and such is also the tone of the Federal Government in its intercourse with individuals; but no sooner has it anything to do with a State, than it begins to parley, to explain its motives and to justify its conduct, to argue, to advise, and in short anything but to command. If doubts are raised as to the limits of the constitutional powers of each Government, the provincial Government prefers its claims with bold. ness, and taken prompt and energetic steps to support it. In the mean while the Government of the Union reasons, it appeals to the interests, to the good sense, to the glory of the nation; it temporizes, it negotiates, and does not consent to act until it is reduced to the last extremity. At first sight it might readily be imagined that it is the provincial Government which is armed with the authority of the nation, and that Congress represents a single State. The Federal Government is, therefore, notwithstanding the precautions of those who founded it, naturally so weak, that it more peculiarly requires the free consent of the governed to enable it to subsist. It is easy to perceive that its object is to enable the States to realize with facility their determination of remaining united; and, as long as this preliminary consideration exists, its authority is great, temperate, and effective. The Constitution fits the Government to control individ. uals, and easily to surmount such obstacles as they may be inclined to offer, but it was by no means established with a view to the possible separation of one or more of the States from the Union. If the sovereignty of the Union were to engage in a struggle with that of the States at the present day, its defeat may be confidently predicted; and it is not probable that such a struggle would be seriously undertaken. As often as steady resistance is offered to the Federal Government it will be found to yield. Experience has hitherto shown that whenever a State has demanded anything with perseverance and resolution, it has invariably succeeded: and that if a separate Government has distinctly refused to act, it was left to do as it thought fit.✻ But even if the Government of the Union had any strength inherent in itself, the physical situation of the country would render the exercise of that strength very difficult.† The United States cover an immense territory; they are separated from each other by great distances; and the population is disseminated over the surface of a country which is still half a wilderness. If the Union were to undertake to enforce the allegiance of the confederate States by military means, it would be in a position very analogous to that of England at the time of the War of Independence. However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and, in uniting together, they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so; and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal Government easily to conquer the resistance which may be offered to it by any one of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as has frequently been the case in the history of confederations. If it be supposed that among the States which are united by the Federal tie, there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central Government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the Government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in order to derive equal advantages from their union; * See the conduct of the Northern States in the war of 1812. "During that war," says Jefferson in a letter to General Lafayette, "four of the Eastern States were only attached to the Union, like so many inanimate bodies to living men.". The profound peace of the Union affords no pretext for a standing army; and without a standing army a Government is not prepared to profit by a favorable opportunity to conquer resistance, and take the sovereign power by surprise. and in the case just alluded to, the Federal Government would derive its power from the unequal distribution of those benefits among the States. If one of the confederate States have acquired a preponderance sufficiently great to enable it to take exclusive possession of the central authority, it will consider the other States as subject provinces, and it will cause its own supremacy to be respected under the borrowed name of the sovereignty of the Union. Great things may then be done in the name of the Federal Government, but in reality that Government will have ceased to exist.✻ In both these cases, the power which acts in the name of the confederation becomes stronger, the more it aban. dons the natural state and the acknowledged principles of confedera. tions. In America the existing Union is advantageous to all the States, but it is not indispensable to any one of them. Several of them might break the Federal tie without compromising the welfare of the others, although their own prosperity would be lessened. As the existence and the happiness of none of the States are wholly dependent on the present Constitution, they would none of them be disposed to make great personal sacrifices to maintain it. On the other hand, there is no State which seems, hitherto, to have its in the maintenance of the existing Union. exercise the same influence in the Federal Councils, but no one of them can hope to domineer over the rest, or to treat them as its inferiors of as its subjects. It ambition much interested They certainly do not all appears to me unquestionable, that if any portion of the Union se. riously desired to separate itself from the other States, they would not be able, nor indeed would they attempt, to prevent it; and that the present Union will only last as long as the States which compose it choose to continue members of the confederation. If this point be admitted, the question becomes less difficult; and our object is not to in quire whether the States of the existing Union are capable of separat. ing, but whether they will choose to remain united. [The remarks repecting the inability of the Federal government to retain within the Union any State that may choose "to withdraw its name from the contract," ought not to pass through an American edition of this work, Thus the province of Holland in the republic of the Low Countries, and the Emperor in the Germanic Confederation, have sometimes put themselves in the place of the Union, and have employed the Federal authority to their own advan tage. without the expression of a dissent by the editor from the opinion of the author. The laws of the United States must remain in force in a revolted State, until repealed by Congress; the customs and postages must be collected; the courts of the United States must sit, and must decide the causes submitted to them; as has been very happily explained by the author, the courts act upon individuals. If their judgments are resisted, the executive arm must interpose, and if the State authorities aid in the resistance, the military power of the whole Union must be invoked to overcome it. So long as the laws affecting the citizens of such a State remain, and so long as there remain any officers of the general government to enforce them, these results must follow not only theoretically but actually. The author probably formed the opinions which are the subject of these remarks, at the commencement of the controversy with South Carolina respecting the Tariff. And when they were written and published, he had not learned the result of that controversy, in which the supremacy of the Union and its laws was triumphant. There was doubtless great reluctance in adopting the necessary measures to collect the customs, and to bring every legal question that could possibly arise out of the controversy, before the judiciary of the United States, but they were finally adopted, and were not the less successful for being the result of deliberation and of necessity. Out of that controversy have arisen some advantages of a permanent character, produced by the legislation which it required. There were defects in the laws regulating the manner of bringing from the State courts into those of the United States, a cause involving the constitutionality of acts of Congress or of the States, through which the Federal authority might be evaded. Those defects were remedied by the legislation referred to; and it is now more emphatically and universally true, than when the author wrote, that the acts of the general government operate through the judiciary, upon individual citizens, and not upon the States.—American Editor.] Among the various reasons which tend to render the existing Union useful to the Americans, two principal causes are peculiarly evident to the observer. Although the Americans are, as it were, alone upon their continent, their commerce inakes them the neighbors of all the nations with which they trade. Notwithstanding their apparent isolation, the Americans require a certain degree of strength, which they cannot retain otherwise than by remaining united to each other. If the States were to split, they would not only diminish the strength which they are now able to display towards foreign nations, but they would soon create foreign powers upon their own territory. A system of inland custom-houses would then be established; the valleys would be divided by imaginary boundary-lines; the courses of the rivers would be confined by territorial distinctions; and a multitude of hindran. ces would prevent the Americans from exploring the whole of that vast |