ess the government succeeds in creating an armed
force, which, whilst it remains under the control of the majority of the
nation, will be independent of the town population, and able to repress
its excesses.

[The population of the city of New York had risen, in 1870, to 942,292,
and that of Philadelphia to 674,022. Brooklyn, which may be said to form
part of New York city, has a population of 396,099, in addition to that
of New York. The frequent disturbances in the great cities of America,
and the excessive corruption of their local governments--over which
there is no effectual control--are amongst the greatest evils and
dangers of the country.]]

To subject the provinces to the metropolis is therefore not only
to place the destiny of the empire in the hands of a portion of the
community, which may be reprobated as unjust, but to place it in the
hands of a populace acting under its own impulses, which must be avoided
as dangerous. The preponderance of capital cities is therefore a serious
blow upon the representative system, and it exposes modern republics to
the same defect as the republics of antiquity, which all perished from
not having been acquainted with that form of government.

It would be easy for me to adduce a great number of secondary causes
which have contributed to establish, and which concur to maintain, the
democratic republic of the United States. But I discern two principal
circumstances amongst these favorable elements, which I hasten to point
out. I have already observed that the origin of the American settlements
may be looked upon as the first and most efficacious cause to which the
present prosperity of the United States may be attributed. The Americans
had the chances of birth in their favor, and their forefathers imported
that equality of conditions into the country whence the democratic
republic has very naturally taken its rise. Nor was this all they did;
for besides this republican condition of society, the early settler
bequeathed to their descendants those customs, manners, and opinions
which contribute most to the success of a republican form of government.
When I reflect upon the consequences of this primary circumstance,
methinks I see the destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan who
landed on those shores, just as the human race was represented by the
first man.

The chief circumstance which has favored the establishment and the
maintenance of a democratic republic in the