States they can be affected by it only
by their relation to each other through the General Government and by
its effect on the operations of that Government. Manifest it is that to
any extent to which the General Government can sustain and execute its
functions with complete effect will the States--that is, the people who
compose them--be benefited. It is only when the expansion shall be
carried beyond the faculties of the General Government so as to enfeeble
its operations to the injury of the whole that any of the parts can be
injured. The tendency in that stage will be to dismemberment and not to
consolidation. This danger should, therefore, be looked at with profound
attention as one of a very serious character. I will remark here that
as the operations of the National Government are of a general nature,
the States having complete power for internal and local purposes, the
expansion may be carried to very great extent and with perfect safety.
It must be obvious to all that the further the expansion is carried,
provided it be not beyond the just limit, the greater will be the
freedom of action to both Governments and the more perfect their
security, and in all other respects the better the effect will be to
the whole American people. Extent of territory, whether it be great
or small, gives to a nation many of its characteristics. It marks the
extent of its resources, of its population, of its physical force.
It marks, in short, the difference between a great and a small power.

To what extent it may be proper to expand our system of government is a
question which does not press for a decision at this time. At the end of
the Revolutionary war, in 1783, we had, as we contended and believed,
a right to the free navigation of the Mississippi, but it was not until
after the expiration of twelve years, in 1795, that that right was
acknowledged and enjoyed. Further difficulties occurred in the bustling
of a contentious world when, at the expiration of eight years more, the
United States, sustaining the strength and energy of their character,
acquired the Province of Louisiana, with the free navigation of the
river from its source to the ocean and a liberal boundary on the western
side. To this Florida has since been added, so that we now possess all
the territory in which the original States had any interest, or in which
the existing States can be said, either in a national or local point
of view, to be in any way interested