physical strength as a
condition of national prosperity. It profits a people but little to
be affluent and free if it is perpetually exposed to be pillaged
or subjugated; the number of its manufactures and the extent of its
commerce are of small advantage if another nation has the empire of the
seas and gives the law in all the markets of the globe. Small nations
are often impoverished, not because they are small, but because they are
weak; the great empires prosper less because they are great than
because they are strong. Physical strength is therefore one of the first
conditions of the happiness and even of the existence of nations. Hence
it occurs that, unless very peculiar circumstances intervene, small
nations are always united to large empires in the end, either by force
or by their own consent: yet I am unacquainted with a more deplorable
spectacle than that of a people unable either to defend or to maintain
its independence.

The Federal system was created with the intention of combining the
different advantages which result from the greater and the lesser
extent of nations; and a single glance over the United States of America
suffices to discover the advantages which they have derived from its
adoption.

In great centralized nations the legislator is obliged to impart a
character of uniformity to the laws which does not always suit the
diversity of customs and of districts; as he takes no cognizance of
special cases, he can only proceed upon general principles; and the
population is obliged to conform to the exigencies of the legislation,
since the legislation cannot adapt itself to the exigencies and the
customs of the population, which is the cause of endless trouble and
misery. This disadvantage does not exist in confederations. Congress
regulates the principal measures of the national Government, and all
the details of the administration are reserved to the provincial
legislatures. It is impossible to imagine how much this division of
sovereignty contributes to the well-being of each of the States which
compose the Union. In these small communities, which are never agitated
by the desire of aggrandizement or the cares of self-defence, all public
authority and private energy is employed in internal amelioration. The
central government of each State, which is in immediate juxtaposition to
the citizens, is daily apprised of the wants which arise in society; and
new projects are proposed every year, which ar