rth of July, 1776, Congress, with already National
authority, flung to the world the announcement that these united
colonies were a Nation, and ordered that copies of the
declaration should be sent to the several colonial assemblies,
conventions, councils of safety, and to each of the commanding
officers of the Continental troops, and that it should be
proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the
army. We see, therefore, that the Declaration of Independence, in
being truly National, was wholly centralizing--and much more so
than any act since, and is therefore the truest basis of our
liberties.

Our age has annihilated space; danger lies in darkness and
distance. With every newspaper, every railroad, every line of
telegraph, danger from centralized National power grows less.
With the newspaper, the railroad, the telegraph, the course of
the government is constantly before our eyes The reporter
penetrates everywhere, the lightning flashes everywhere, and
before plans are scarcely formed here in Washington, the miner of
California, the lumberman of Maine, and the cotton-grower of
Carolina are passing opinions and interchanging views upon them
with their neighbors. The increase of education in the common
schools, and the vast private correspondence of the country, too,
help to put the proceedings of the government under the
cognizance of the whole people. Our danger lies elsewhere, and to
clearly see it we must still look back to the early history of
our Nation. For a few months after the Declaration of
Independence, our new-born republic worked under a common
sentiment, for a common interest; but ultimately self-interest
prompted the claim of "State Rights." This doctrine was, by wise
men, seen to be utterly destructive to the government, and in the
second year of our independence it became necessary to fight this
State-right doctrine, and the second step was taken in
centralization, by the Articles of Confederation, which were
declared to make the Union perpetual, and States were forbidden
to coin money, establish their own weights and measures, their
own post-offices, and forbidden to do many other things which, by
right, belong to independent self-controlling States.

So anxious was the Nation to set its own power up