government. It was
destined to be wrung from their hard necessities. The Constitution was
the reflex action of two opposing tendencies, the one the imperative
need of an efficient central government, and the other the passionate
attachment to local self-rule. Co-operation between the colonies had
been a matter of long discussion and earnest debate, and primarily
resulted from the necessity of defence against a common foe the French
in Canada, and the Indians of the forest. In 1643 four of the New
England colonies united in a league to defend themselves. In 1693
William Penn made the first suggestion for a union of all the colonies.
In 1734 a council was held at Albany at the instance of the Crown to
provide the means for the defence against France in Canada, and it was
then that Franklin submitted the first concrete form for a union of the
colonies into a permanent alliance. It was in advance of the times, for,
conservative as it was, it was unfortunately opposed both by the Crown
and the colonies themselves.

The time was not ripe for any such union, and the reason was apparent.
The colonies differed very much in the character of their populations,
in the nature of their economic interests, and in their political
antecedents. They were not wholly of the English race. Many nations in
Europe had already contributed to the population. For example, New York
was partly Dutch, and in Pennsylvania there was a considerable element
of the Swedes, Germans, and Swiss. Moreover, the colonists were as
widely separated from each other, measured by the facilities of
locomotion, as are the most remote nations of the world to-day. Only a
few men ever found occasion to leave their colony to journey to another,
and most men never left, from birth to death, the community in which
they lived. Outside of the few scattered communities in the different
colonies there was an almost unbroken wilderness, with few wagon roads
and in places only a bridle path. The only methods of communication were
the letters and still fewer newspapers, which were carried by post
riders often through an almost trackless wilderness.

Obviously, a working government could not easily be constituted between
peoples of different religions, races, and economic interests, who, for
the most part, never met each other face to face and with whom frequent
communication was impossible.

The differences between the colonies and the mother-country with respect
to internal