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the renewal of those resources. It may ensure a victory in the hour of strife, but it gradually relaxes the sinews of strength. It may contribute admirably to the transient greatness of a man, but it cannot ensure the durable prosperity of a people.
If we pay proper attention, we shall find that whenever it is said that a state cannot act because it has no central point, it is the centralization of the government in which it is deficient. It is frequently asserted, and we are prepared to assent to the proposition, that the German empire was never able to bring all its powers into action. But the reason was, that the state has never been able to enforce obedience to its general laws, because the several members of that great body always claimed the right, or found the means, of refusing their co-operation to the representatives of the common authority, even in the affairs which concerned the mass of the people; in other words, because there was no centralization of government. The same remark is applicable to the middle ages; the cause of all the confusion of feudal society was that the control, not only of local but of general interests, was divided among a thousand hands, and broken up in a thousand different ways: the absence of a central government prevented the nations of Europe from advancing with energy in any straightforward course.
We have shown that in the United States no central administration, and no dependant series of public functionaries exist. Local authority has been carried to lengths which no European nation could endure without great inconvenience, and which have even produced some disadvantageous consequences in America. But in the United States the centralization of the government is complete; and it would be easy to prove that the national power is more compact than it has ever been in the old monarchies of Europe. Not only is there but one legislative body in each state; not only does there exist but one source of political authority; but numerous district assemblies and county courts have in general been avoided, lest they should be tempted to exceed their administrative duties and interfere with the government. In America the legislature of each state is supreme: nothing can impede its authority; neither privileges, nor local immunities, nor personal influence, nor even the empire of reason, since it represents that majority which claims to be the sole organ of reason. Its own determination is,
