for
the Rhine frontier, between two civilized Christian nations who have
each enough work to do in ithe world without engaging in such a strife
as this, will, I am sure, be by and by condemned by the general opinion
of mankind. Such questions will have to be settled by discussion in some
sort of federal council or parliament, if Europe would keep pace with
America in the advance towards universal law and order. All will admit
that such a state of things is a great desideratum: let us see if it is
really quite so utopian as it may seem at the first glance. No doubt the
lord who dwelt in Haddon Hall in the fifteenth century would have
thought it very absurd if you had told him that within four hundred
years it would not be necessary for country gentlemen to live in great
stone dungeons with little cross-barred windows and loopholes from which
to shoot at people going by. Yet to-day a country gentleman in some
parts of Massachusetts may sleep securely without locking his
front-door. We have not yet done away with robbery and murder, but we
have at least made private warfare illegal; we have arrayed public
opinion against it to such an extent that the police-court usually makes
short shrift for the misguided man who tries to wreak vengeance on his
enemy. Is it too much to hope that by and by we may similarly put public
warfare under the ban? I think not. Already in America, as wre have
seen, it has become customary to deal with questions between states just
as we would deal with questions between individuals. This we have seen
to be the real purport of American federalism. To have established such
a system ovrer one great continent is to have made a very good beginning
towards establishing it over the world. To establish such a system in
Europe will no doubt be difficult, for here we have to deal with an
immense complication of prejudices, intensified by linguistic and
ethnological differences. Nevertheless the pacific pressure exerted upon
Europe by America is becoming so great that it will doubtless before
long overcome all these obstacles. I refer to the industrial competition
between the old and the new worlds, which has become so conspicuous
within the last ten years. Agriculturally Minnesota, Nebraska, and
Kansas are already formidable competitors with England, France, and
Germany; but this is but the beginning. It is but the first spray from
the tremendous wave of economic competition that is gathering in the
Mississ