Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/227

.] fear of danger from one another, and from foreign powers, and by the influence of the emperor.

The Swiss cantons have been instanced, also, as a proof of the natural imbecility of federal governments. Their league has sustained a variety of changes; and, notwithstanding the many causes that tend tp disunite them, they still stand firm. We have not the same causes of disunion or internal variance that they have. The individual cantons composing the league are chiefly aristocratic. What an opportunity does this offer to foreign powers to disturb them by bribing and corrupting their aristocrats! It is well known that their services have been frequently purchased by foreign nations. Their difference of religion has been a source of divisions and animosity between them, and tended to disunite them. This tendency has been considerably increased by the interference of foreign nations, the contiguity of their position to those nations rendering such interference easy. They have been kept together by the fear of those nations, and the nature of their association; the leading features of which are a principle of equality between the cantons, and the retention of individual sovereignty. The same reasoning applies nearly to the United Netherlands. The other confederacy which has been mentioned has no kind of analogy to our situation.

From a review of these leagues, we find the causes of the misfortunes of those which have been dissolved, to have been a dissimilarity of structure in the individual members, the facility of foreign interference, and recurrence to foreign aid After this review of those leagues, if we consider our comparative situation, we shall find that nothing can be adduced, from any of them, to warrant a departure from a confederacy to a consolidation, on the principle of inefficacy in the former to secure our happiness. The causes which, with other nations, rendered leagues ineffectual and inadequate to the security and happiness of the people, do not exist here. What is the form of our state governments? They are all similar in their structure—perfectly democratic. The freedom of mankind has found an asylum here which it could find nowhere else. Freedom of conscience is enjoyed here m the fullest degree. Our states are not disturbed by a contrariety of religious opinions, and other causes of quarrels which other nations have. They have no causes of internal variance. Causes of war between the states have been