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itself against the retiring party, and the federalists found themselves in so small a minority, that they at once despaired of their future success. From that moment the republican or democratic party has proceeded from conquest to conquest, until it has acquired absolute supremacy in the country. The federalists, perceiving that they were vanquished without resource, and isolated in the midst of the nation, fell into two divisions, of which one joined the victorious republicans, and the other abandoned its rallying point and its name. Many years have already elapsed since they ceased to exist as a party.
The accession of the federalists to power was, in my opinion, one of the most fortunate incidents which accompanied the formation of the great American Union: they resisted the inevitable propensities of their age and of their country. But whether their theories were good or bad, they had the defect of being inapplicable, as a system, to the society which they professed to govern; and that which occurred under the auspices of Jefferson must therefore have taken place sooner or later. But their government gave the new republic time to acquire a certain stability, and afterward to support the rapid growth of the very doctrines which they had combated. A considerable number of their principles were in point of fact imbodied in the political creed of their opponents; and the federal constitution, which subsists at the present day, is a lasting monument of their patriotism and their wisdom.
Great political parties are not, then, to be met with in the United States at the present time. Parties, indeed, may be found which threaten the future tranquillity of the Union; but there are none which seem to contest the present form of government, or the present course of society. The parties by which the Union is menaced do not rest upon abstract principles, but upon temporal interests. These interests disseminated in the provinces of so vast an empire, may be said to constitute rival nations rather than parties. Thus, upon a recent occasion, the north contended for the system of commercial prohibition, and the south took up arms in favour of free trade, simply because the north is a manufacturing, and the south an agricultural district; and that the restrictive system which was profitable to the one, was prejudicial to the other.
In the absence of great parties, the United States abound with lesser controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand
