ll_ are essential to our peace and prosperity, but on an
energetic continental government principally depend our tranquillity at
home and our respectability among foreign nations. We ought to
generalize [that is, delocalize] our ideas and our measures. We ought
not to consider ourselves as inhabitants of a particular State only, but
as _Americans_, as the common subjects of a great empire. We cannot and
ought not wholly to divest ourselves of provincial views and
attachments, but we should subordinate them to the general interests of
the continent. As a member of a family every individual has some
domestic interests; as a member of a corporation he has other interests;
as an inhabitant of a State he has a more extensive interest; as a
citizen and subject of the American empire he has a national interest
far superior to all others. Every relation in society constitutes some
obligations, which are proportional to the magnitude of the society. A
good prince does not ask what will be for the interest of a county or
small district in his dominions, but what will promote the prosperity of
his kingdom. In the same manner, the citizens of this New World should
inquire, not what will aggrandize this town or that State, but what will
augment the power, secure the tranquillity, multiply the subjects, and
advance the opulence, the dignity, and the virtues, of the United
States. Self-interest, both in morals and politics, is and ought to be
the ruling principle of mankind; but this principle must operate in
perfect conformity to social and political obligations. Narrow views and
illiberal prejudices may for a time produce a selfish system of politics
in each State; but a few years' experience will correct our ideas of
self-interest, and convince us that a selfishness which excludes others
from a participation of benefits is, in all cases, self-ruin, and that
_provincial_ interest is inseparable from _national interest_."

It will be seen that Webster, though confused sometimes in his
phraseology, and weak in his philosophy, did see with an English
freeman's political instinct the practical bearings of his subject, and
in his broad, comprehensive survey disclosed that large American
apprehension of freedom and nationality which underlay the best thought
of his time. His pamphlet is not a piece of elegant writing, and it is
introduced by superficial theorizing; but the practical value is great.
Thoughts which have so entered into our p