A union like the American cannot be created by a
compact, or by the exercise of supreme power. The Emperor of the
French cannot erect the several Departments of France into
states, and divide the powers of government between them as
individual and as united states. They would necessarily hold
from the imperial government, which, though it might exercise a
large part of its functions through them, would remain, as now,
the supreme central government, from which all governmental
powers emanate, as our President is apparently attempting, in his
reconstruction policy, to make the government of the United
States. The elements of a state constituted like the American do
not exist in any European nation, nor in the constitution of
European society; and the American constitution would have been
impracticable even here had not Providence so ordered it that the
nation was born with it, and has never known any other.
Rome recognized the necessity of the federal principle, and
applied it in the best way she could. At first it was a single
tribe or people distributed into distinct gentes or houses; after
the Sabine war, a second tribe was added on terms of equality,
and the state was dual, composed of two tribes, the Ramnes and
the Tities or Quirites, and, afterward, in the time of Tullus
Hostilius, were added the Lucertes or Luceres, making the
division into three ruling tribes, each divided into one hundred
houses or gentes.
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