rwise it
cannot long subsist: in a large one, there are men of large fortunes, and
consequently of less moderation; there are too great deposits to trust in
the hands of a single subject; an ambitious person soon becomes sensible
that he may be happy, great, and glorious by oppressing his fellow
citizens, and that he might raise himself to grandeur, on the ruins of his
country. In large republics, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand
views; in a small one, the interest of the public is easily perceived,
better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have
a less extent, and of course are less protected_--he also shows you, that
the duration of the republic of Sparta was owing to its having continued
with the same extent of territory after all its wars; and that the
ambition of Athens and Lacedemon to command and direct the union, lost
them their liberties, and gave them a monarchy.

From this picture, what can you promise yourselves, on the score of
consolidation of the United States into one government? Impracticability
in the just exercise of it, your freedom insecure, even this form of
government limited in its continuance, the employments of your country
disposed of to the opulent, to whose contumely you will continually be an
object--you must risk much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest
magnitude, into the hands of individuals whose ambition for power, and
aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you--where from the vast extent of
your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of
government will become intricate and perplexed, and too mysterious for you
to understand and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a
monarchy, either limited or despotic; the latter, Mr. Locke remarks, _is a
government derived from neither nature nor compact_.

_Political liberty_, the great Montesquieu again observes, _consists in
security, or at least in the opinion we have of security_; and this
_security_, therefore, or the _opinion_, is best obtained in moderate
governments, where the mildness of the laws, and the equality of the
manners, beget a confidence in the people, which produces this security,
or the opinion. This moderation in governments depends in a great measure
on their limits, connected with their political distribution.

The extent of many of the states of the Union, is at this time almost too
great for the superintendence of a republican form of gov