difficult problem of forming such a political aggregate as the United States have become.  For obviously the preservation of local self-government is essential to the very idea of a federal union.  Without the Town-Meeting, or its equivalent in some form or other, the Federal Union would become ipso facto converted into a centralizing imperial government.  Should anything of this sort ever happen—­should American towns ever come to be ruled by prefects appointed at Washington, and should American States ever become like the administrative departments of France, or even like the counties of England at the present day—­then the time will have come when men may safely predict the break-up of the American political system by reason of its overgrown dimensions and the diversity of interests between its parts.  States so unlike one another as Maine and Louisiana and California cannot be held together by the stiff bonds of a centralizing government.  The durableness of the federal union lies in its flexibility, and it is this flexibility which makes it the only kind of government, according to modern ideas, that is permanently applicable to a whole continent.  If the United States were to-day a consolidated republic like France, recent events in California might have disturbed the peace of the country.  But in the federal union, if California, as a state sovereign within its own sphere, adopts a grotesque constitution that aims at infringing on the rights of capitalists, the other states are not directly affected.  They may disapprove, but they have neither the right nor the desire to interfere.  Meanwhile the laws of nature quietly operate to repair the blunder.  Capital flows away from California, and the business of the state is damaged, until presently the ignorant demagogues lose favour, the silly constitution becomes a dead-letter, and its formal repeal begins to be talked of.  Not the smallest ripple of excitement disturbs the profound peace of the country at large.  It is in this complete independence that is preserved by every state, in all matters save those in which the federal principle itself is concerned, that we find the surest guaranty of the permanence of the American political system.  Obviously no race of men, save the race to which habits of self-government and the skilful use of political representation had come to be as second nature, could ever have succeeded in founding such a system.

Yet even by men of English race, working with out let or hindrance from any foreign source, and with the better part of a continent at their disposal for a field to work in, so great a political problem as that of the American Union has not been solved without much toil and trouble.  The great puzzle of civilization—­how to secure permanent concert of action without sacrificing independence of action—­is a puzzle which has taxed the ingenuity of Americans as well as of older Aryan peoples.  In the year 1788 when our Federal Union was completed, the problem had already