cidental source of the error may be added the artifice of some
celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming
the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of
an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten
the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in
comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as
specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and
modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to
transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy only; and
among others, the observation that it can never be established but among
a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory.

Such a fallacy may have been the less perceived, as most of the popular
governments of antiquity were of the democratic species; and even in
modern Europe, to which we owe the great principle of representation, no
example is seen of a government wholly popular, and founded, at the same
time, wholly on that principle. If Europe has the merit of discovering
this great mechanical power in government, by the simple agency of which
the will of the largest political body may be concentred, and its force
directed to any object which the public good requires, America can claim
the merit of making the discovery the basis of unmixed and extensive
republics. It is only to be lamented that any of her citizens should
wish to deprive her of the additional merit of displaying its full
efficacy in the establishment of the comprehensive system now under her
consideration.

As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central
point which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as
often as their public functions demand, and will include no greater
number than can join in those functions; so the natural limit of a
republic is that distance from the centre which will barely allow
the representatives to meet as often as may be necessary for the
administration of public affairs. Can it be said that the limits of the
United States exceed this distance? It will not be said by those who
recollect that the Atlantic coast is the longest side of the Union, that
during the term of thirteen years, the representatives of the States
have been almost continually assembled, and that the members from the
most distant States are not chargeable with greater intermissions of
att