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society; it represents an immense but remote country, and claims a feeling of patriotism which is vague and ill defined: but the authority of the States controls every individual citizen at every hour and in all circumstances; it protects his property, his freedom, and his life; and when we recollect the traditions, the customs, the prejudices of local and familiar attachment with which it is connected, we cannot doubt of the superiority of a power which is interwoven with every circumstance that renders the love of one's native country instinctive in the human heart.
Since legislators are unable to obviate such dangerous collisions as occur between the two sovereignties which co-exist in the Federal system, their first object must be, not only to dissuade the confederate States from warfare, but to encourage such institutions as may promote the maintenance of peace. Hence it results that the Federal compact cannot be lasting unless there exists in the communities which are leagued together, a certain number of inducements to union which render their common dependence agreeable, and the task of the Government light; and that system cannot succeed without the presence of favourable circumstances added to the influence of good laws. All the peoples which have ever formed a confederation have been held together by a certain number of common interests, which served as the intellectual ties of association.
