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hitherto, is in a great measure owing to geographical position, extent of territory, and other peculiar advantages already adverted to, which favour its internal tranquillity and its peace with foreign nations.

A federal system is necessarily complex, as involving two sovereignties which are liable to come into collision.

"In examining the constitution of the United States," says M. De Tocqueville, "which is the most perfect federal constitution that ever existed, one is amazed at the variety of information and the excellence of discretion which it presupposes in the people it is meant to govern."-" When once the general theory is comprehended, numberless difficulties remain to be solved in its application; for the sovereignty of the union is so involved in that of the states, that its boundaries cannot be immediately distinguished. The whole structure of the government is artificial and conventional; and it would be ill adapted to a people that had not been long accustomed to conduct its own affairs; or to one in which the science of politics had not descended to the humblest classes of society."

The attempt to transfer this form of government to Mexico has proved an utter failure.* It is needless to

* "The seductive example, then always growing in the United States of America, induced us to adopt without discretion its system of government, proper only for that singular people, who, in times more recent, have begun to fall into confusion, and to give way to the complication and debility of its institutions. Transcendant was the error of imagining that the United States were indebted for their prosperity to the institutions, and not to the character of the people. We conceived that by writing down for ourselves the same laws, and adopting the same codes, we might effect a complete revolution in the habits, in the customs, and in the genius of the nation. Deeply engaged in imitating the great model, copies of sovereignty were formed,

observe that a confederacy of republics would be quite inapplicable to the British empire; and there is no example in history of a great nation which has long existed as a consolidated republic.-"All the passions, says De Tocqueville, "fatal to republics increase with the extent of territory, whilst the virtues which tend to their preservation do not proportionably increase."

But even in America the weakness of the central government relatively to that of the particular states is a serious defect.

In the year 1801, on the occasion of the election of the President, the requisite majority could not be obtained in favour of any individual, and four days of balloting did not produce a single change of vote. The party opposed to Mr. Jefferson then proposed "to pass a law for putting the government into the hands of an officer." But Mr. Jefferson himself informs us, in his Memoirs, (vol. III. p. 460,) “We thought it best to declare openly and firmly, one and all, that the day such an act passed the middle states would arm, and that no such usurpation, even for a single day, should be submitted to."

In the war of 1812, the President ordered the militia to proceed towards the frontiers. The states of Connecticut and Massachusetts refused on several pretexts to furnish their contingent, and persisted in that refusal in spite of the mandate of the federal government.

The doctrine of "nullification," as it is called, is

with all the apparatus of independent states, the which augmented the divisions and the sacrifices of the people. All was weakness and disunion, because in the federal system the action of the government is almost null. But why dilate on the enumeration of facts and circumstances with which every one is conversant?"-Speech of SANTA ANNA, Provisional President of the Mexican Republic, on the opening of the session of Congress, 10th of June, 1842,

advocated by Mr. Calhoun, one of the ablest speakers in the American senate, and by other statesmen, and it has been maintained by South Carolina and some other states. The purport of that doctrine is, that a single state assumes to itself the right of abrogating or annulling, within its own limits, a law which has been passed by the constitutional representatives of the whole twenty-six states of the union assembled in Congress.

There has been a recent revolutionary attempt in Maryland, to subvert the existing government, and to set up a new one.

There was lately a serious convulsion in Rhode Island, which having been briefly described by the celebrated American orator, Mr. Clay, in a speech delivered at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1842, I shall quote his own words:

"That little, but gallant and patriotic state, had a charter, derived from a British king, in operation between one and two hundred years. There had been engrafted upon it laws and usages from time to time; and altogether a practical constitution sprung up, which carried the state, as one of the glorious thirteen, through the revolution, and brought her safely into the union. Under it, her Greens and Perrys, and other distinguished men, were born and rose to eminence. The legislature had called a convention to remedy whatever defects it had, and to adapt it to the progressive improvements of the age. In that work of reform, the Dorr party might have co-operated; but, not choosing so to co-operate, and in wanton defiance of all established authority, they undertook subsequently to call another convention. The result was two constitutions, not essentially differing on the principal point of controversy, the right of suffrage.

"The Dorr party proceeded to put their constitution in operation, by electing him as the governor of the

power

state, members to the mock legislature, and other officers. But they did not stop here; they proceeded to collect, to drill, and to marshal a military force, and pointed their cannon against the arsenal of the state. "The President was called upon to interpose the of the union, to preserve the peace of the state, in conformity with an express provision of the federal constitution. The leading presses of the democratic party at Washington, Albany, New York, and Richmond, and elsewhere, came out in support of the Dorr party, encouraging them in their work of rebellion and treason. And when matters had got to a crisis, and the two parties were preparing for a civil war, and every hour it was expected to blaze out, a great Tammany meeting was held in the city of New York, headed by the leading men of the party, with a perfect knowledge that the military power of the union was to be employed, if necessary, to suppress the insurrection, and, notwithstanding, they passed resolutions tending to awe the President, and to countenance and cheer the treason."

In the same speech, Mr. Clay also mentions "the refusal of a minority in the legislature of Tennessee to co-operate with the majority, (their constitution requiring the presence of two-thirds of the members,) to execute a positive injunction of the constitution of the United States to appoint two United States senators. In principle, that refusal was equivalent to announcing the willingness of that minority to dissolve the union. For if thirteen or fourteen of the twenty-six states were to refuse altogether to elect senators, a dissolution of the union would be the consequence. That minority, for weeks together, and time after time, deliberately refused to enter upon the election. And if the union

is not in fact dissolved, it is not because the principle involved would not lead to a dissolution, but because twelve or thirteen other states have not, like themselves,

refused to perform a high constitutional duty. And why did they refuse? Simply because they apprehended the election to the senate of political opponents. The seats of the two Tennessee senators in the United States senate are now vacant, and Tennessee has no voice in that branch of Congress in the general legislation."

The serious financial difficulties with which Washington had to contend, during the war with this country, have already been referred to. Not many years since, the credit of the United States stood very high, and their stocks were a favourite investment for the capitalists of Europe. Now they have an empty exchequer, several of the states are unable to pay their dividends to the public creditor, the legislatures of others have proposed to " repudiate" the debts contracted by their predecessors in office, the public securities of the union are in universal discredit, and its currency and finances are in great disorder. Yet the natural resources of the country are great, and the people are most enterprising and energetic.*

* Doubtless the doctrine of repudiation, which has been countenanced by headstrong men of inferior principle, in some of the state legislatures, would be utterly rejected by Congress, and by all respectable and honourable Americans. Mr. Webster, in a speech delivered at Boston, on the 30th of September, 1842, said:-"We have national stock which ought to command one hundred and twenty-five per cent. Can a dollar of it be sold? And this commonwealth, is not even she embarrassed in her operations, and made to feel the blighting influence of a degraded public credit? And is nobody to make any movement? Is there no mind large enough, comprehensive enough, to show that it can quit party contest, and devote itself to rebuilding our national credit-to the re-establishment of national faith, and, I may say, character for honour and morals? Some are indiscreet enough to talk of repudiation. Does repudiation cancel a debt? Is a state not always bound by her debts, notwith

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