tensive market
at home, which would be the most profitable because free from duty.

There is another view in which these improvements are of still more
vital importance. The effect which they would have on the bond of union
itself affords an inducement for them more powerful than any which have
been urged or than all of them united. The only danger to which our
system is exposed arises from its expansion over a vast territory.
Our union is not held together by standing armies or by any ties other
than the positive interests and powerful attractions of its parts toward
each other. Ambitious men may hereafter grow up among us who may promise
to themselves advancement from a change, and by practicing upon the
sectional interests, feelings, and prejudices endeavor under various
pretexts to promote it. The history of the world is replete with
examples of this kind--of military commanders and demagogues becoming
usurpers and tyrants, and of their fellow-citizens becoming their
instruments and slaves. I have little fear of this danger, knowing well
how strong the bond which holds us together is and who the people are
who are thus held together; but still, it is proper to look at and to
provide against it, and it is not within the compass of human wisdom
to make a more effectual provision than would be made by the proposed
improvements. With their aid and the intercourse which would grow out
of them the parts would soon become so compacted and bound together
that nothing could break it.

The expansion of our Union over a vast territory can not operate
unfavorably to the States individually. On the contrary, it is believed
that the greater the expansion within practicable limits--and it is not
easy to say what are not so--the greater the advantage which the States
individually will derive from it. With governments separate, vigorous,
and efficient for all local purposes, their distance from each other can
have no injurious effect upon their respective interests. It has already
been shown that in some important circumstances, especially with the aid
of these improvements, they must derive great advantage from that cause
alone--that is, from their distance from each other. In every other way
the expansion of our system must operate favorably for every State in
proportion as it operates favorably for the Union. It is in that sense
only that it can become a question with the States, or, rather, with
the people who compose them. As