nd untried government, which it
was feared would swallow up the states and everywhere extinguish local
independence. Nor can it be said that such fears were unreasonable. Our
federal government has indeed shown a strong tendency to encroach upon
the province of the state governments, especially since our late Civil
War. Too much centralization is our danger to-day, as the weakness of
the federal tie was our danger a century ago. The rule of the
Federalist party was needed in 1789 as the rule of the Republican party
was needed in 1861, to put a curb upon the centrifugal tendencies. But
after Federalism had fairly done its great work, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, it was well that the administration of our national
affairs should pass into the hands of the party to which Thomas
Jefferson and Samuel Adams belonged, and which Madison, in his calm
statesmanlike wisdom, had come to join. And now that, in our own day,
the disruptive forces have been even more thoroughly and effectually
overcome, it is time for the principles of that party to be reasserted
with fresh emphasis. If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid!)
when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their
local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and
when the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost as
that of the departments of France, or even so far as that of the
counties of England,--on that day the progressive political career of
the American people will have come to an end, and the hopes that have
been built upon it for the future happiness and prosperity of mankind
will be wrecked forever.

I do not think that the historian writing at the present day need fear
any such direful calamity, for the past century has shown most
instructively how, in such a society as ours, the sense of political
dangers slowly makes its way through the whole mass of the people, until
movements at length are made to avert them, and the pendulum swings in
the opposite direction. The history of political parties in the United
States is especially rich in lessons of this sort. Compared with the
statesmen of the Federal Convention, we are at a great advantage in
studying this question of national consolidation; and we have no excuse
for failing to comprehend the attitude of the men who dreaded the
creation of a national legislature as the entering wedge which would by
and by rend asunder the structure