ar Sovereignty. This
defect has not hitherto had very many practical inconveniences, but it
is an absolute violation of the theory and the spirit of American
democratic institutions. The time may come when the fulfillment of a
justifiable democratic purpose may demand the limitation of certain
rights, to which the Constitution affords such absolute guarantees; and
in that case the American democracy might be forced to seek by
revolutionary means the accomplishment of a result which should be
attainable under the law.

It was, none the less, a great good thing that the Union under the new
Constitution triumphed. Americans have more reason to be proud of its
triumph than of any other event in their national history. The formation
of an effective nation out of the thirteen original colonies was a
political achievement for which there was no historical precedent. Up to
that time large countries had been brought, if not held, together by
military force or by a long process of gradually closer historical
association. Small and partly independent communities had combined one
with another only on compulsion. The necessities of joint defense might
occasionally drive them into temporary union, but they would not stay
united. They preferred a precarious and tumultuous independence to a
combination with neighboring communities, which brought security at the
price of partial subordination and loyal cooeperation. Even the provinces
which composed the United Netherlands never submitted to an effective
political union during the active and vital period of their history. The
small American states had apparently quite as many reasons for
separation as the small Grecian and Italian states. The military
necessities of the Revolution had welded them only into a loose and
feeble confederation, and a successful revolution does not constitute a
very good precedent for political subordination. The colonies were
divided from one another by difficulties of communication, by
variations in economic conditions and social customs, by divergent
interests, and above all by a rampant provincial and separatist spirit.
On the other hand, they were united by a common language, by a common
political and legal tradition, and by the fact that none of them had
ever been really independent sovereign states. Nobody dared or cared to
object to union in the abstract; nobody advocated the alternative of
complete separation; it was only a strong efficient union whic