of the Federal Executive was, however, removed by its efforts in the
Civil War, and those powers were largely extended.]]

The only safeguard which the American Union, with all the relative
perfection of its laws, possesses against the dissolution which would
be produced by a great war, lies in its probable exemption from that
calamity. Placed in the centre of an immense continent, which offers
a boundless field for human industry, the Union is almost as much
insulated from the world as if its frontiers were girt by the ocean.
Canada contains only a million of inhabitants, and its population is
divided into two inimical nations. The rigor of the climate limits the
extension of its territory, and shuts up its ports during the six months
of winter. From Canada to the Gulf of Mexico a few savage tribes are
to be met with, which retire, perishing in their retreat, before six
thousand soldiers. To the South, the Union has a point of contact with
the empire of Mexico; and it is thence that serious hostilities may one
day be expected to arise. But for a long while to come the uncivilized
state of the Mexican community, the depravity of its morals, and its
extreme poverty, will prevent that country from ranking high amongst
nations. *w As for the Powers of Europe, they are too distant to be
formidable.

[Footnote w: [War broke out between the United States and Mexico in
1846, and ended in the conquest of an immense territory, including
California.]]

The great advantage of the United States does not, then, consist in a
Federal Constitution which allows them to carry on great wars, but in
a geographical position which renders such enterprises extremely
improbable.

No one can be more inclined than I am myself to appreciate the
advantages of the federal system, which I hold to be one of the
combinations most favorable to the prosperity and freedom of man. I
envy the lot of those nations which have been enabled to adopt it; but I
cannot believe that any confederate peoples could maintain a long or an
equal contest with a nation of similar strength in which the government
should be centralized. A people which should divide its sovereignty into
fractional powers, in the presence of the great military monarchies of
Europe, would, in my opinion, by that very act, abdicate its power, and
perhaps its existence and its name. But such is the admirable position
of the New World that man has no other enemy than himself; and that,
in or