There is one peculiarity in our national history, which created almost a necessity, that we should run for a time into the vice of which we speak. Without an experience which as a nation we have not had, it was hardly possible either for the rest of the world to understand us, or for us to understand ourselves. Our government is in part founded on a new discovery in political science, as truly original as the invention of steam navigation, or the telegraph. Our constitution is called a confederation of States. That is nothing new under the sun. Confederations have been common from the days of the Grecian republics to our own times. But our confederation is in a most important respect unlike all that have preceded it. In a confederation of States properly so called, the central government has States, and States only, for subjects. It can command the individual only by commanding the State to which the individual owes allegiance. In our confederation, if confederation it must be called, the central government is restricted, indeed, to a very limited number of interests; but in respect to those interests, it is as truly national as the government of England or France. It never commands a State; it has no power or right to do so; it commands individuals only. It is therefore unlike any other confederacy. It is unlike any other national government, be cause, though it governs all the individuals of the entire nation, it governs them only in respect to certain limited and accurately defined interests, leaving them to be governed in all other respects by the several States, as though the central government did not exist. This, we say, is a new discovery, or, if any one pleases to call it so, a new experiment in the science of government.

De Tocqueville, in his work on American Democracy, has stated this point with so much clearness and force, that we cannot forbear quoting his words. He says:

"The human understanding more easily invents new things than new words, and we are thence constrained to employ a multitude of improper and inadequate expressions. Where several nations form a permanent league and establish a supreme authority, which although it has not the same influence over the members of the community as a national government, acts upon each of the confede

rate States in a body, this government which is so essentially different from all others, is denominated a Federal one. Another form of Society is afterwards discovered, in which several peoples are fused into one and the same nation with regard to certain common interests, although they remain distinct or at least only confederate with regard to all other concerns. In this case the central power acts directly upon those whom it governs, whom it rules, and whom it judges in the same manner as, but in a much more limited circle than a national government. Here the term Federal government is clearly no longer applicable to a state of things which must be styled an incomplete national government. A form of government has been found out which is neither exactly national nor federal; but no farther progress has been made, and the new word which will one day designate this novel invention does not yet exist." p. 138.

This most important feature in our national constitution, is, in the strictest sense, a new discovery, a new invention. But if history proves anything, it proves that new discoveries in government are never made available for the benefit of mankind, except through conflict and blood. It was appointed to the English nation, for example, to demonstrate that a king may reign while the people govern. She has nobly wrought out this problem in the sight of Europe and the world, and a noble step of progress it is in the science of government. But in working it out she has taken from one king his head, and from another his crown, and has sacrificed in civil conflict what thousands of her people, and what millions of her treasure! Nor is there any evidence that, as human nature is, the problem could have been solved at a less cost either of blood or treasure.

Let us not imagine that we are exempt from a law of national progress to which all the past has been subjected. We have incorporated in our constitution a new and an exceedingly important invention in the science of government. We may not expect to render it available for the benefit of mankind till it shall have been subjected to the ordeal of bloody conflict. A portion of our people are tired of the contract. They wish to escape from the Union which our fathers formed. This, say they, is not a national government, it is a confederation, and will the administration attempt to "coerce" a sovereign State? And the idea of a national government of limited powers has no firm hold of any portion of the national mind; it has not yet been subjected to the ordeal

of the sword; it has not yet been written in blood. And the bloody handwriting of the sword is to nations the only intelligible writing. The word "coercion" had well nigh frightened the nation from its propriety. It was because we did not, and, according to the laws of the human mind, as a nation, we could not half understand this grand peculiarity of our constitution.

It is wonderful to observe that the profound De Tocqueville himself, after having stated the case so clearly in the extract we have made, falls, in the subsequent part of his work, into the very same error. He says:

"However strong a government may be, it cannot 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 with. draw its name from the contract 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 right." p. 367.

Again:

"It appears to me unquestionable that if any portion of the Union seriously desired to separate itself from the other states, they would not be able, nor indeed would they attempt to prevent it, and the present Union will only last as long as the states which compose it choose to continue members of the confedera tion." p. 369.

This is South Carolina logic; this is the logic to which the partisan watch-cry of "coercion" was addressed-this, too, from a profound philosopher who had previously analyzed the constitution with great discrimination and accuracy, and shown that within the limits of those interests which are committed to it, our government is as truly and completely national as that of France under Napoleon III, and has just as good, exclusive, and perfect a right to collect imposts in the port of Charleston, as the government of England has to collect them in the port of Liverpool; and the people have just as much right to cry "coercion" in the one case as in the other. This writer shows that carefully as he has pointed out the inaccuracy of the words Federal and Confederation, when applied to our government, these words have still overmastered him, and led his thoughts far away from that great invention in the

science of government, for which he has elsewhere given the framers of the constitution ample credit. Even the philosophers are like the rest of us common mortals; they cannot persistently see a political truth till it has been established by conflict and written in blood.

And so it is with the philosophers and with the unlearned, with foreigners and with ourselves, with the South and with the North; it will never be clearly seen and felt in the depths of men's souls that a government of limited powers can exert those powers in presence of and in opposition to those states from which it originally received them by voluntary cession, till it has been proved by fierce and bloody conflict. Till our general government has asserted those powers in the face of opposition, and shown its strength by overcoming resistance and trampling out rebellion, it will, as human nature is, almost necessarily be regarded as weak and helpless, dependent on the capricious will of thirty-four sovereign states, and existing for a twelve month only by their sufferance.

While our general government continued to occupy such a position, it could not be much respected either at home or abroad. It is for this same reason that England cannot understand us at the present moment, and displays in speaking of our present crisis an ignorance, which alternately provokes our contempt and our anger. It were best that we spare both, and teach her by deeds that we are not a mere confederation but a nation, and that it is as absurd for her to talk of "strict neutrality" and the "rights of belligerents" in the present contest, as for us to use similar language in a conflict between her and her Irish, Canadian, or Indian subjects. We say we must teach her by deeds; for deeds are the only sort of instruction which the nature of the case admits of, or which can be effectual.

And by deeds, too, we must instruct ourselves and our own people. Such a national experience as that out of which we have lately come, such a national nightmare, as that from which the booming of Sumter's cannon was hardly able to awaken us, was only possible in such a dim twilight of some great fundamental political truth, as exists before it has received the sanction of trial by deadly conflict. The giant frauds on our

national treasury, the astounding acts of treason committed by many of the highest functionaries of our government, both civil and military, and the still more astounding toleration with which we, the people, endured it all, would have been impossible but for this dim and inadequate perception of this fundamental principle of our government. And this dimness of vision was nearly universal. Few of us saw with any clearness and vividness of perception, that we have a supreme government at Washington. And if we have not a supreme government at Washington, then, certainly, nowhere; for our state governments do not profess to be supreme; they are not such either in theory or in practice. The only effect, then, of such a state of things has been to attack and destroy the very principle of loyalty itself; to set up what claims to be a government, as an object of pity and contempt-a government which could not protect good men, and on which bad men could trample with impunity. It has been perfectly notorious for many years, that in large districts of our country the government could not protect the rights of innocent and unoffending citizens; it could not enforce its own laws; it could not maintain the inviolability of its own mails. In such a state of things it need not be thought strange that the principle of loyalty declined, and that reverence for the government itself was fast fading out of the national mind: such a result was partly a necessity of our national history.

If these things are so, our present national crisis has not come a moment too soon; and we can well afford to meet it at the sacrifice, of no matter how many human lives, and how many millions of treasure. Such a crisis we must meet, and meet soon, or be utterly ruined by our growing disloyalty, and the vices without number which inevitably spring from it. And we may well hope that it will furnish the very discipline we need. It is to be hoped that we and the world shall find that we have a real government, that there is a power in and over this nation, mild and benignant indeed, but yet a power, which can demand and enforce obedience over every foot of its domain; a power which can overcome resistance, which can trample out even a gigantic rebellion, and make itself felt, feared and honored; a power which can in all parts of this