to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But
how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who
had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed,
that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local
franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a
centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been
possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the
Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You
will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him
whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could
have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been
under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won
the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies,
he will answer you with a smile.

The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love
their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of
political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of
foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it;
because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and
habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the
king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours
received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I
admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating,
a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a
constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts
except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well
as political philosophers, can see them and count them.

Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which
the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to
break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial
unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish
demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you
will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops
could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South
for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or,