l purposes_. I know of nothing in the history of the world,
notwithstanding the great league of Grecian states, notwithstanding the
success of the Roman system, (and certainly there is no exception to the
remark in modern history,)--I know of nothing so suitable on the whole
for the great interests of a great people spread over a large portion of
the globe, as the provision of local legislation for local and municipal
purposes, with, not a confederacy, nor a loose binding together of
separate parts, but a limited, positive general government for positive
general purposes, over the whole. We may derive eminent proofs of this
truth from the past and the present. What see we to-day in the
agitations on the other side of the Atlantic? I speak of them, of
course, without expressing any opinion on questions of politics in a
foreign country; but I speak of them as an occurrence which shows the
great expediency, the utility, I may say the necessity, of local
legislation. If, in a country on the other side of the water (Ireland),
there be some who desire a severance of one part of the empire from
another, under a proposition of repeal, there are others who propose a
continuance of the existing relation under a federative system: and
what is this? No more, and no less, than an approximation to that system
under which we live, which for local, municipal purposes shall have a
local legislature, and for general purposes a general legislature.

This becomes the more important when we consider that the United States
stretch over so many degrees of latitude,--that they embrace such a
variety of climate,--that various conditions and relations of society
naturally call for different laws and regulations. Let me ask whether
the legislature of New York could wisely pass laws for the government of
Louisiana, or whether the legislature of Louisiana could wisely pass
laws for Pennsylvania or New York? Everybody will say, "No." And yet the
interests of New York and Pennsylvania and Louisiana, in whatever
concerns their relations between themselves and their general relations
with all the states of the world, are found to be perfectly well
provided for, and adjusted with perfect congruity, by committing these
general interests to one common government, the result of popular
general elections among them all.

I confess, Gentlemen, that having been, as I have said, in my humble
career in public life, employed in that portion of the public service