ate incidents which
accompanied the formation of the great American Union; they resisted
the inevitable propensities of their age and of the country. But
whether their theories were good or bad, they had the effect of being
inapplicable, as a system, to the society which they professed to
govern, and that which occurred under the auspices of Jefferson must
therefore have taken place sooner or later. But their Government gave
the new republic time to acquire a certain stability, and afterwards to
support the rapid growth of the very doctrines which they had combated.
A considerable number of their principles were in point of fact embodied
in the political creed of their opponents; and the Federal Constitution
which subsists at the present day is a lasting monument of their
patriotism and their wisdom.

Great political parties are not, then, to be met with in the United
States at the present time. Parties, indeed, may be found which threaten
the future tranquillity of the Union; but there are none which seem to
contest the present form of Government or the present course of society.
The parties by which the Union is menaced do not rest upon abstract
principles, but upon temporal interests. These interests, disseminated
in the provinces of so vast an empire, may be said to constitute rival
nations rather than parties. Thus, upon a recent occasion, the North
contended for the system of commercial prohibition, and the South
took up arms in favor of free trade, simply because the North is a
manufacturing and the South an agricultural district; and that the
restrictive system which was profitable to the one was prejudicial to
the other. *b

[Footnote b: [The divisions of North and South have since acquired a
far greater degree of intensity, and the South, though conquered,
still presents a formidable spirit of opposition to Northern
government.--Translator's Note, 1875.]]

In the absence of great parties, the United States abound with lesser
controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute
shades of difference upon questions of very little moment. The pains
which are taken to create parties are inconceivable, and at the present
day it is no easy task. In the United States there is no religious
animosity, because all religion is respected, and no sect is
predominant; there is no jealousy of rank, because the people is
everything, and none can contest its authority; lastly, there is no
public indigence to