directly concern them only, and which they will naturally manage with
more intelligence and with more zeal than any distant governing body
could possibly exercise; but that, as regards matters of common concern
between a group of states, a decision shall in every case be reached,
not by brutal warfare or by weary diplomacy, but by the systematic
legislation of a central government which represents both states and
people, and whose decisions can always be enforced, if necessary, by
the combined physical power of all the states. This principle, in
various practical applications, is so familiar to Americans to-day that
we seldom pause to admire it, any more than we stop to admire the air
which we breathe or the sun which gives us light and life. Yet I believe
that if no other political result than this could to-day be pointed out
as coming from the colonization of America by Englishmen, we should
still be justified in regarding that event as one of the most important
in the history of mankind. For obviously the principle of federalism, as
thus broadly stated, contains within itself the seeds of permanent peace
between nations; and to this glorious end I believe it will come in the
fulness of time.

And now we may begin to see distinctly what it was that the American
government fought for in the late civil war,--a point which at the time
was by no means clearly apprehended outside the United States. We used
to hear it often said, while that war was going on, that we were
fighting not so much for the emancipation of the negro as for the
maintenance of our federal union; and I well remember that to many who
were burning to see our country purged of the folly and iniquity of
negro slavery this used to seem like taking a low and unrighteous view
of the case. From the stand-point of universal history it was
nevertheless the correct and proper view. The emancipation of the negro,
as an incidental result of the struggle, was a priceless gain which was
greeted warmly by all right-minded people. But deeper down than this
question, far more subtly interwoven with the innermost fibres of our
national well-being, far heavier laden too with weighty consequences for
the future weal of all mankind, was the question whether this great
pacific principle of union joined with independence should be overthrown
by the first deep-seated social difficulty it had to encounter, or
should stand as an example of priceless value to other ages and to