its own
interests, and its judgment is to be respected by the citizens as well
as by the governments of other states. Religious propagandism is a
right and a duty, because religion is catholic and of universal
obligation; and so is the jus gentium of the Romans, which is only the
application to individuals and nations of the great principles of
natural justice; but no political propagandism is ever allowable,
because no one form of government is catholic in its nature, or of
universal obligation.

Thoughtful Americans are opposed to political propagandism, and respect
the right of every nation to choose its own form of government; but
they hold that the American system is the best in itself, and that if
other nations were as enlightened as the American, they would adopt it.
But though the American system, rightly understood, is the best, as
they hold, it is not because other nations are less enlightened, which
is by no means a fact, that they do not adopt, or cannot bear it, but
solely because their providential constitutions do not require or admit
it, and an attempt to introduce it in any of them would prove a failure
and a grave evil.

Fit your shoes to your feet. The law of the governmental constitution
is in that of the nation. The constitution of the government must grow
out of the constitution of the state, and accord with the genius, the
character, the habits, customs, and wants of the people, or it will not
work well, or tend to secure the legitimate ends of government. The
constitutions imagined by philosophers are for Utopia, not for any
actual, living, breathing people. You must take the state as it is,
and develop your governmental constitution from it, and harmonize it
with it. Where there is a discrepancy between the two constitutions,
the government has no support in the state, in the organic people, or
nation, and can sustain itself only by corruption or physical force. A
government may be under the necessity of using force to suppress an
insurrection or rebellion against the national authority, or the
integrity of the national territory, but no government that can sustain
itself, not the state, only by physical force or large standing armies,
can be a good government, or suited to the nation. It must adopt the
most stringent repressive measures, suppress liberty of speech and of
conscience, outrage liberty in what it has the most intimate and
sacred, and practise the most revolting violence an