inished power in aid of the general good; the local
Legislatures controlled, within the original limits, local interests.
The people had suffered no curtailment of their liberties from the
delegation of political power; the executive had not been weakened
either by the accession of new States or the disaffection of old ones.
The most philosophic of the English statesmen had predicted again and
again that one of these alternatives must occur,--but they had begun to
doubt their own theories, and wellnigh confessed that our institutions
were a success. It was difficult for them to conceive that an entirely
novel frame of government, deriving its genius from an idea, and
regardless of precedent, could live to shame a system which had received
the sanction of centuries of success, which was seemingly Providential
in its stability, which had everywhere superseded every other form,
which had absorbed into itself the elements of all other systems. Our
Government was an anomaly; as such, there were ten chances to one
against it. And now, the Englishman who, above all others, is, on both
sides of the Atlantic, regarded as the ablest of modern political
theorists, has in a series of papers triumphantly vindicated the wisdom
of the founders of this Republic, and placed in the clearest logical
sequence the origin and tendency of our institutions. Every American
feels gratitude and reverence toward John Stuart Mill, who, in the
disinterestedness and courage of a great mind, has led the honest
opinion of England to appreciate at its value the system in which our
reason and our feelings are alike bound up.

The confident belief, that an unusual strain on the supposed weak points
of the Federal Constitution would involve it in the fate of the Cromwell
dynasty and the French Revolution had begun to sleep, at the time of the
Secession movement, and but one ray of hope yet remained to the enemies
of republican government. They watched Slavery with an anxious eye.
There was their only chance. In that they saw the apple of discord which
might destroy our Union. They observed with exultation the increasing
influence of those who warred upon slavery in the North, and the
increasing insolence of those who would nationalize it in the South. On
this ground State and Federal authority must, they thought, come in
conflict. And as far as foresight could avail them, they had some reason
to be encouraged. That question has always been, without doubt, o