ubt, great and perilous. To achieve the conquest of their
independence, they had to go through a war with a powerful enemy, and
the construction of a central government in the place of the distant
power whose yoke they threw off: but in their local institutions, and
those which regarded the daily affairs of life, they had no revolution
to make. Each of the colonies already enjoyed a free government as to
its internal affairs, and when it became a state found little change
necessary or desirable in the maxims and organization of power. There
was no ancient order of things to fear, to hate, to destroy; the
attachment to the ancient laws and manners, the affectionate reverence
for the past, were, on the contrary, the general sentiments of the
people. The colonial government under the patronage of a distant
monarchy, was easily transformed into a republican government under a
federation of states.

Of all the forms or modes of government, the republican is
unquestionably that to which the general and spontaneous assent of the
country is the most indispensable. It is possible to conceive of an
absolute monarchy founded by violence, and indeed such have existed; but
a republic forced upon a nation, popular government established contrary
to the instinct and the wishes of a people--this is a spectacle
revolting equally to common sense and to justice. The Anglo-American
colonies, in their transition, into the republic of the United States,
had no such difficulty to surmount; the Republic was the full and free
choice of the people; and in adopting that form of government they did
but accomplish the national wish, and develop instead of overturning
their existing institutions.

Nor was the perturbation greater in social than in political order.
There were no conflicts between different classes, no violent transfer
of influence from one order of men to another. Though the crown of
England had still partisans in the colonies, their attachment had
nothing to do with their position in the scale of society; indeed the
wealthy and important families were in general the most firmly resolved
on the conquest of their independence and the foundation of a new
system. Under their direction the people acted, and the event was
accomplished. And if society underwent no revolution, so neither did
men's minds. The philosophical ideas of the eighteenth century, its
moral skepticism and its religious unbelief, had no doubt penetrated
into the Uni