icle to enter into the details of
the American government, its advantages or defects. This much, however,
is clear--the American Constitution has lasted nearly one hundred years,
and shows no signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of
the greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the conflict
stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism of the rebels
was directed, not against the Union, but against the efforts of the
Northern States to suppress slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as
the Southern States believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their
property in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of making
their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we may draw, that a
nation in which the Imperial powers and the State powers are vested in
different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all
national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are
wielded by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be learnt
from the American War of Secession--namely, that in a nation having such
a division of powers, any conflict between the two classes results in
the Supreme or Imperial powers prevailing over the Local governmental
powers, and not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the
Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle is towards
an undue centralization of the nation by reason of the encroachment by
the Supreme authority, rather than towards a weakening of the national
unity by separatist action on the part of the constituent members of the
nation.

In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the Constitution
of the British Empire, we find an apparent resemblance in form as
respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies, but underlying the surface a total
difference of principle. The United States is an aggregate of
homogeneous and contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves
into a nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority,
reserving to themselves all powers of government which they did not
expressly relinquish.

The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities under one common
head, and is thus described by Mr. Burke in 1774, in language which may
seem to have been somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was
spoken, but at the present day does not more than do justice to an
Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in extent and
population:--