eir local and private interests and will permit
their political craft to drift into a compromising situation--from which
the penalties of rescue may be almost as distressing as the penalties of
submission.

The tradition of an individualist and provincial democracy, which is the
mainstay of an anti-national policy, does not include ideals which have
to be realized by aggressive action. Their ideals are the ones embodied
in our existing system, and their continued vitality demands merely a
policy of inaction enveloped in a cloud of sacred phrases. The advocates
and the beneficiaries of the prevailing ideas and conditions are little
by little being forced into the inevitable attitude of the traditional
Bourbon--the attitude of maintaining customary or legal rights merely
because they are customary or legal, and predicting the most awful
consequences from any attempt to impair them. Men, or associations of
men, who possess legal or customary rights inimical to the public
welfare, always defend those rights as the essential part of a political
system, which, if it is overthrown, will prove destructive to public
prosperity and security. On no other ground can they find a plausible
public excuse for their opposition. The French royal authority and
aristocratic privileges were defended on these grounds in 1780, and as
the event proved, with some show of reason. In the same way the partial
legislative control of nationalized corporations now exercised by the
state government, is defended, not on the ground that it has been well
exercised, not even plausibly on the ground that it can be well
exercised. It is defended almost exclusively on the ground that any
increase in the authority of the Federal government is dangerous to the
American people. But the Federal government belongs to the American
people even more completely than do the state governments, because a
general current of public opinion can act much more effectively on the
single Federal authority than it can upon the many separate state
authorities. Popular interests have nothing to fear from a measure of
Federal centralization, which bestows on the Federal government powers
necessary to the fulfillment of its legitimate responsibilities; and the
American people cannot in the long run be deceived by pleas which bear
the evidence of such a selfish origin and have such dubious historical
associations. The rights and the powers both of states and individuals
must be comp