ferent provinces were obliged to act to-be too wise again to renew the conflict

gether for their great mutual objects of political independence; but, even in its highest paroxysms, it has always at last found an antidote in the deeper feelings and more sober calculations of a consistent patriotism. Perhaps its prevalence and activity may with more truth be ascribed, in every generation, to the ambition of men who find in it a convenient instrument of local influence, rather than to any other cause. It is certain that when it has raged most violently, this has been its chief aggravating element. The differences of neither manners, institutions, climate, nor pursuits, would at any time have been sufficient to create the perils to which the Union of the States has occasionally been exposed, without the mischievous agency of men whose personal objects are, for the time, subserved by the existence of such peculiarities. The proof of this is to be found in the fact, that the seasonable sagacity of the people has always detected the motives of those who have sought to employ their passions, and has compelled them at last to give way to that better order of men who have appealed to their reason."*

Alas! since this was written the argument has been put to a ruder issue, and a sterner arbiter has been brought in than the voice of sober judgment. But at the beginning and throughout the unhappy contest we may look to find the same parties. The antagonism commenced in faction, and the insane will of the few must depend for reconciliation in the end on the well grounded sober second thought of the many. Posterity, we may hope, profiting by our misfortunes, will

*History of the Constitution of the United States, by

George Ticknor Curtis, i. 372. New York, 1854.

on such a stage, with such weapons. No questions of domestic rights and policy can arise among us which may not be peaceably and satisfactorily adjusted by fair minded men for the welfare of all under the liberal provisions and beneficent working of the Constitution.

To expect that any large bodies of men will live together under a general government, actuated by the spirit of freedom, without the existence of party differences and opinions, is to look for what has never yet existed under any political system, and what it would, perhaps, be unphilosophical to desire. Uniformity of sentiment on all subjects in which a considerable number of men are called to act together, can exist only with a degree of indifference which would be more alarming than opposition. We may have stagnation and apparent uniformity; but a living, vital system will be the result of contending energies. Party we must expect to have under the best possible conditions of government. No society, worthy to take rank with the nations of the world, may hope to be without it. The various interests of such a community cannot be made so homogeneous that some cause of contention will not arise. If we could bring our wills and inclinations to uniformity, the very constitution of nature would still produce diversity. If our Northern and Southern States were to be definitely separated from one another, in each portion there would yet be differences. The manufacturing and commercial interests, city and country, free trade and protection, capital and labor, would be asserting their distinctive There would be a foreign policy and a claims with more or less of hostility.

POLITICAL ADJUSTMENTS.

domestic policy; a policy of taxation, an inequality in the means of meeting it; a rivalry between the seaboard and the interior, between army and navy, between one method of internal improvement and another. While, if we should admit into the arena the discussion of new forms of government, or make religion in any way a state question, the opportunities of controversy would be indefinitely and intensely multiplied.

9

human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants." But he adds, however, that while we may part with some civil liberties, "for the advantages to be derived from the communion and fellowship of a great empire," we must take care that "the thing bought bear some proportion to the purchase paid."* Applying these principles to the regulation of our political affairs on this continent, we find them already recognized in that great instrument, one of the subtlest contrivances of human wisdom, the Constitution of the United States. That organizes a government of balanced powers and mutual duties. It prescribes limitations where they are necessary, and leaves action free in the path of progress. It has been found hitherto, and will be found again, that where its provisions are honestly received and maintained, we shall have a free, liberal and enlightened government.

Now, the first principle of all combinations in society whatever, is that men must regulate their differences by adjustment and concession in some way. It is the most imperative of all social and political doctrines, without which neither a family, a club of friends, a city, a state, an empire, in fact, any form of human organization whatever, can exist. The full recognition of this paramount truth is the great distinction between wisdom and erlatanism in statesmanship. It is the difference between theory and practice, between mathematics and moralsthe acceptance of a fate which is a law to the whole world. When material forces simply are to be dealt with, provided their qualities are well understood, a result only of long experience, they may be handled according to a definite, fixed rule or prescription. A formula of the chemist or the mechanician may be carried out to the letter. Not so with human dealing. There our action and progress must be politic. We must, within certain limits, be pliable and yielding, and leaving ideal abstractions and inflexible resolutions, get all the good we can under the circumstances. In answer to this question, which inWiscly, treating of this very subject, and volves the considerations of the essential in connection too with American affairs, conditions of union in the government said the great English statesman, Edmund of the whole number of states, we may Burke, "All government, indeed every Speech on Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775.

Is there anything which necessarily interferes with this? Has the Constitution failed to meet any question which has arisen, either of domestic or foreign policy? On the contrary, under its guidance and protection we have advanced in honor and influence abroad, in wealth and happiness at home. Why, then, have not all alike acknowledged its advantages, and been faithful in their allegiance?

*

to favor such a dissolution. The Alleghanies presented no formidable dif ficulty, and the differences of soil and climate, with their corresponding varieties of production, so far from creating hostilities, were rightly considered bonds of union. He observed the almost exclusive agricultural employments of the Southern States; the equally engrossing commercial and manufacturing pursuits of the North, and the mingled agricultural and manufacturing industry of the West. But he saw no opposition in these diverse forms of wealth. He perceived no unhappy disagreement between the production of tobacco, of cotton, or rice, and that of wheat or Indian corn; nor did he see why one region might not yield with propriety what another with equal felicity should distribute to the world, The central regions of the West could have no ships, and the South might certainly benefit by the hardy commercial adventure of the North. As for slavery, so far from looking upon it at that time as a means of disintegration, he saw the South dependent upon the North for protection against the possible dangers of an alarmingly increasing negro population, dangerous to the safety of the whites in the minority.

with satisfaction turn from the tumult of the national government. Nor did and confusion of the hour, to the calm, he find any physical causes calculated accurately-pronounced judgment of De Tocqueville. He is universally accredited as a philosophical observer, of nice powers of discrimination in all that relates to the constitution and government of political bodies, and the qualifications for their well being. He has shown a remarkable sagacity and insight in his treatment of the affairs of America, and he wrote, moreover, at a time when the subject was fairly open to his view, amply illuminated by the experience of half a century of the history of the country, and quite unobscured by any mists of passion or prejudice belonging to the day. From 1835 to 1840, when M. De Tocqueville was engaged in committing to writing his great work on American Democracy, the results of his observations made a few years previously in the United States, the nation was prosperous and in repose. The cloud which had gathered on the political horizon, in a small region of South Carolina, in the Nullification proceedings of 1832, had been dissipated; and the political machinery of the general and state governments was working with its accustomed ease and regularity. What were then his observations and deductions? Looking first to the material interests depending upon the permanent existence of the Union, he found a powerful plea for its safety in the advantages gained by the States in strength in maintaining their commercial and public rights with other nations; while at home he saw, in the continuance of the confederacy, the absence of those evils of custom-houses, standing armies, taxes, and burdensome restrictions of all kinds, sure to arise on the Continent, on the breaking up

Turning from material, he regarded those moral instincts which, stronger than all physical ties, are the bonds of good citizenship in civil societies. He found in the United States a remarkable agreement on those leading social and political principles, which make men to be of one mind in a house. 'A government," says he, "retains its sway over a great number of citizens, far less by the voluntary and rational consent of the multi

tude, than by that instinctive and, to a the South, which at that time, under the certain extent, involuntary agreement, impulses given to European emigration, which results from similarity of feelings was rapidly yielding in population to the and resemblances of opinion." The peo-hitherto unpeopled West. The instituple of the United States, though cherishing tion of slavery he saw also, not so much a great variety of sects, in general, he producing a diversity of interest, as a remarked, exhibited great uniformity of difference of manners; opposing the feelbelief. Emphatically they had but one ings and sentiments attached to a comnotion of politics, that of self-govern- paratively idle, luxurious mode of living ment, with all its claims or pretensions to wisdom, justice and virtue; while national pride, lifting them above the monarchies of the old world, which regarded them with distrust, bound them together as one people. "They perceive that, for the present," said he, "their own demotratic institutions succeed, while those of other countries fail; hence they conceive an overweening opinion of their superiority, and they are not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind."

to the thoughts and habits induced by the stern industry and resolute persistence of the occupants of regions in some respects less favored by nature.

"The inhabitants of the Southern States are, of all the Americans," is the language of this acute writer, "those who are most interested in the maintenance of the Union; they would assuredly suffer most from being left to themselves; and yet they are the only citizens who threaten to break the tie of confederation. But it is easy to perceive These, it must be admitted, are pow- that the South, which has given four erful links of agreement, both of interest | presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madiand sympathy. But man is not always son, and Monroe, to the Union; which steadily governed by his interests, and his sympathies on great subjects may be disturbed by very inferior motives. The philosophical De Tocqueville saw some of these at work. Glancing at the danger of some one portion of the country getting so powerful as to do without the rest, and the difficulties which might result in some undefined way from the vast and unwieldy growth of a people rapidly spreading on a huge continent, with singular sagacity, as the event has proved, he dwelt at length on the jealousy which might arise from the comparative inferiority of a portion-a comparison, by the way, which ought never to arise where inevitable sectional differences should be lost in the general welfare of the whole. That cause of embarrassment he found at

perceives that it is losing its federal influence, and that the number of its representatives in Congress is diminishing. from year to year, while those of the Northern and Western States are increasing; the South, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is becoming more and more irritated and alarmed. The citizens reflect upon their present position, and remember their past influence, with the melancholy uneasiness of men who suspect oppression : if they discover a law of the Union which is not unequivocally favorable to their interests, they protest against it as an abuse of force, and if their ardent remonstrances are not listened to, they threaten to quit an association which loads them with burdens

while it deprives them of their due must needs have many explanations of profits."