THE INFLUENCE OF PENSIONS.

369

harbors at their mouths, some of them of large importance, and some that only the most optimistic could see value in; but such of them as are important have needed improvement, and in the river and harbor bills Michigan has been able on plausible claims to secure extensive recognition, and the claims have been allowed to an extent that has seldom left ground for complaint. And to every locality that has received a grant from the general government, the grant has somehow seemed like a mere gift, as if in some providential way the money had come to the national treasury without cost to the people, and the nation was distributing it in benefactions. The State would be powerless to make such benefactions except at a cost of direct taxes; and the people of the State would never assent to the levy of taxes for such purposes. In fact, they have prohibited it by their constitution.

An overflowing national treasury has also encouraged liberal pensions, and gradual additions to the classes of pensioners, until the number of persons dependent upon the nation for bounty of this nature has become enormous. The coincidence of interest between these classes and those in whose behalf heavy taxes are laid seems direct and close; and the more their number is increased, and the greater their interest, the more in their minds is the nation elevated, and made continually present as an entity of power and importance at the expense of the State.

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The nation has also since the war made gifts of vast areas of land for the construction of railroads, and loaned large sums of money which might almost as well have been made gifts. It has added to its postal service something of an express business, which has within it the prophecy of greater things to come. The question of annexing the telegraph to the postal service is being urged, and the question of the nation assuming the regulation of railways has for some time been before Congress, and is certain to receive at some time in the near future an affirmative solution.

Then the number of federal office-holders has increased until they constitute a mighty army: an army greater in number than that with which Wellington at Waterloo changed the history of the world; greater than that with which Meade won the decisive victory at Gettysburg in the crisis of the civil war. It has been deemed necessary to legislate to prevent elections from being improperly influenced by the labors and pecuniary contributions of so large a body, directed and expended as they are likely to be by the political machinery of the party in power.

After all these important changes, these great additions to federal power, federal activity, federal beneficence to individuals and localities, and federal agencies and servants, it needs scarcely be said that it is not state action and state legislation that most attract attention, even when the

THE UNION THAT IS TO BE.

371

citizen in the quiet of his own home or in neighborhood gatherings is discussing public affairs. Everything gravitates to Washington; the highest interests and the most absorbing ambitions look. to the national capital for gratification; and it is no longer the state but the nation that in men's minds and imaginations is an ever present sovereignty. And this is as true of the states of which Jefferson and Calhoun have been the idols as it is of Massachusetts or Michigan.

“The constitution as it is and the Union as it was can no longer be the motto and the watchword of any political party. We may preserve the constitution in its every phrase and every letter, with only such modification as was found essential for the uprooting of slavery; but the Union as it was has given way to a new Union with some new and grand features, but also with some engrafted evils which only time and the patient and persevering labors of statesmen and patriots will suffice to eradicate.

INDEX.