tage of civilization; which almost always renders
a union feasible. I do not know of any European nation, how small soever
it may be, which does not present less uniformity in its different
provinces than the American people, which occupies a territory as
extensive as one-half of Europe. The distance from the State of Maine
to that of Georgia is reckoned at about one thousand miles; but the
difference between the civilization of Maine and that of Georgia is
slighter than the difference between the habits of Normandy and those
of Brittany. Maine and Georgia, which are placed at the opposite
extremities of a great empire, are consequently in the natural
possession of more real inducements to form a confederation than
Normandy and Brittany, which are only separated by a bridge.

The geographical position of the country contributed to increase the
facilities which the American legislators derived from the manners and
customs of the inhabitants; and it is to this circumstance that
the adoption and the maintenance of the Federal system are mainly
attributable.

The most important occurrence which can mark the annals of a people is
the breaking out of a war. In war a people struggles with the energy
of a single man against foreign nations in the defence of its very
existence. The skill of a government, the good sense of the community,
and the natural fondness which men entertain for their country, may
suffice to maintain peace in the interior of a district, and to favor
its internal prosperity; but a nation can only carry on a great war at
the cost of more numerous and more painful sacrifices; and to suppose
that a great number of men will of their own accord comply with these
exigencies of the State is to betray an ignorance of mankind. All the
peoples which have been obliged to sustain a long and serious warfare
have consequently been led to augment the power of their government.
Those which have not succeeded in this attempt have been subjugated.
A long war almost always places nations in the wretched alternative
of being abandoned to ruin by defeat or to despotism by success. War
therefore renders the symptoms of the weakness of a government most
palpable and most alarming; and I have shown that the inherent defeat of
federal governments is that of being weak.

The Federal system is not only deficient in every kind of centralized
administration, but the central government itself is imperfectly
organized, which is invari