The republican government of France was lost
without a struggle, because the party of '_un et indivisible_' had
prevailed: no provincial organizations existed to which the people
might rally under authority of the laws, the seats of the directory were
virtually vacant, and a small force sufficed to turn the legislature out
of their chamber and to salute its leader chief of the nation. But
with us, sixteen out of seventeen States rising in mass, under regular
organization and legal commanders, united in object and action by their
Congress, or, if that be in duresse, by a special convention, present
such obstacles to an usurper as for ever to stifle ambition in the first
conception of that object.
Dangers of another kind might more reasonably be apprehended from this
perfect and distinct organization, civil and military, of the States; to
wit, that certain States, from local and occasional discontents, might
attempt to secede from the Union. This is certainly possible; and would
be befriended by this regular organization. But it is not probable that
local discontents can spread to such an extent, as to be able to face
the sound parts of so extensive an union: and if ever they could reach
the majority, they would then become the regular government, acquire the
ascendancy in Congress, and be able to redress their own grievances by
laws peaceably and constitutionally passed. And even the States in which
local discontents might engender a commencement of fermentation, would
be paralyzed and self-checked by that very division into parties into
which we have fallen, into which all States must fall wherein men are at
liberty to think, speak, and act freely, according to the diversities
of their individual conformations, and which are, perhaps, essential
to preserve the purity of the government, by the censorship which these
parties habitually exercise over each other.
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