There are actually imperial edicts extant
forbidden freemen to sell themselves as slaves. Thus ended the
Roman federative system, and it is difficult to discover in
Europe the elements of a federative system that could have a
more favorable result.
Now, the political destiny or mission of the United States is, in
common with the European nations, to eliminate the barbaric
elements retained by the Roman constitution, and specially to
realize that philosophical division of the powers of government
which distinguish it from both imperial and democratic centralism
on the one hand, and, on the other, from the checks and balances
or organized antagonisms which seek to preserve liberty by
obstructing the exercise of power. No greater problem in
statesmanship remains to be solved, and no greater contribution
to civilization to be made. Nowhere else than in this New World,
and in this New World only in the United States, can this problem
be solved, or this contribution be made, and what the
Graeco-Roman republic began be completed.
But the United States have a religious as well as a political
destiny, for religion and politics go together. Church and
state, as governments, are separate indeed, but the principles on
which the state is founded have their origin and ground in the
spiritual order--in the principles revealed or affirmed by
religion--and are inseparable from them.
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