More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The legislators of the states have favored the developmen...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The legislators of the Union did what they could to render th...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
WHAT DISTINGUISHES THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FROM ALL O...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Switzerland, the German Empire, the Republic of the Netherlands were or still are confederations.
the powers conferred by them on the federal government are nearly the same as those granted by the American constitution to the government of the United States.
Nevertheless, the federal government in these different peoples has almost always remained feeble and powerless, whereas that of the Union conducts affairs with vigor and ease.
In all confederations preceding the American confederation of 1789, peoples who were allied in a common goal consented to obey the injunctions of a federal government; but they kept the right to ordain and to oversee for themselves the execution of the laws of the union. The American states that united in 1789 not only consented that the federal government dictate their laws, but also that it execute its laws by itself. In the two cases the right is the same; only the exercise of the right is different. But this sole difference produces immense results.
In America, each state has many fewer occasions and temptations to resist; and if the thought comes to it, it can only put it into execution by openly violating the laws of the Union, interrupting the ordinary course of justice, raising the standard of revolt;
in America, the confederated states, having arrived at independence, had long been part of the same empire; therefore they had not yet contracted the habit of governing themselves completely, and national*12 prejudices had not been able to sink deep roots;
ON THE ADVANTAGES OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM GENERALLY, AND ITS SPECIAL UTILITY FOR AMERICA
In all times, therefore, small nations have been cradles of political freedom.
has happened that most of them have lost that freedom by becoming larger,
the existence of a great republic will always be infinitely more exposed [to peril] than that of a small one.
All the passions fatal to republics grow with the extent of the territory, whereas the virtues that serve as their support do not increase in the same measure.
The ambition of particular persons increases with the p...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
but the love of the native country that must struggle against these destructive passions is not stronger in a vast republic than in a small one. It would even be easy to pro...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
the more numerous the people are and the more diversified the natures of minds and interests, the more difficult it is to form a compact majority as a consequence.
In a great republic, political passions become irresistible not only because the object that they pursue is immense, but also because millions of men feel them in the same manner and at the same moment.
Great states nevertheless have advantages
Internal well-being is more complete and more widespread in small nations as long as they keep themselves at peace; but the state of war is more harmful to them than to great ones.
Small nations are often miserable not because they are small, but because they are weak;
Hence it is that, except in particular circumstances, small peoples are always in the end violently unified with great ones or are unified with each other.
It is to unite the diverse advantages resulting from the greatness and the smallness of nations that the federal system was created.
In great centralized nations, the legislator is obliged to give a uniform character to the laws that does not comport with the diversity of places and of mores;
This inconvenience does not exist in confederations: Congress regulates the principal actions of social existence; every detail of it is abandoned to provincial legislation.
in the United States the taste for and usage of republican government are born in the townships and within the provincial assemblies.
it is this same republican spirit, these mores and habits of a free people, which, after having been born and developed in the various states, are afterwards applied without difficulty to the sum of the country.
The Union is a great republic in extent; but one could in a way liken it to a small republic because the objects with which its government is occupied are few.
As the sovereignty of the Union is hindered and incomplete, the use of that sovereignty is not dangerous for freedom.
In the Union, however, as in one and the same people, things and ideas circulate freely.
The Union is free and happy like a small nation, glorious and strong like a great one.
WHAT KEEPS THE FEDERAL SYSTEM FROM BEING WITHIN REACH OF ALL PEOPLES,
Among the vices inherent in every federal system the most visible of all is the complication of the means that it employs.
The second and most fatal of all the vices that I regard as inherent in the federal system itself is the relative weakness of the government of the Union.
The principle on which all confederations rest is the fragmentation of sovereignty.
And a fragmented sovereignty will always be weaker than a complete sovereignty.
The American government, one may say, does not address the states: it brings its injunctions to reach citizens immediately and bends them in isolation under the effort of the common will.
The American legislators, while rendering conflict between the two sovereignties less probable, did not thereby destroy the causes of it.
they were unable, in case of a conflict, to assure that federal power would be preponderant.
They gave money and soldiers to the Union, but the states kept the love and pr...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Thus, to succeed, the federal system not only needs good laws, but circumstances must also favor it.
In order that a confederation subsist for a long time, it is no less necessary that there be homogeneity in the civilization than in the needs of the various peoples that compose it.
There is one fact that admirably facilitates federal government in the United States. The different states have not only nearly the same interests, the same origin, and the same language, but even the same degree of civilization, which almost always renders agreement between them an easy thing.
A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
is therefore generally in war that the weakness of a government is revealed in a more visible and more dangerous manner; and I have shown that the vice inherent in federal governments is to be very weak.
In the federal constitution of the United States, that one of all others in which the central government is vested with more real strength, this evil is still keenly felt.
How, therefore, is it that the American Union, protected as it is by the relative perfection of its laws, does not dissolve in the middle of a great war? It is that it has no great wars to fear.
Placed at the center of an immense continent, where human industry can spread without bounds, the Union is almost as isolated in the world as if it found itself confined on all sides by the ocean.
PART TWO
Until now I have examined the institutions,
