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 organized, which is invariably an influential cause of inferiority when the nation is opposed to other countries which are themselves governed by a single authority. In the federal constitution of the United States, by which the central government possesses more real force, this evil is still extremely sensible. An example will illustrate the case to the reader.

The constitution confers upon congress the right of “calling forth militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions;” and another article declares that the president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the militia. In the war of 1812, the president ordered the militia of the northern states to march to the frontiers; but Connecticut and Massachusetts, whose interests were impaired by the war, refused to obey the command. They argued that the constitution authorizes the federal government to call forth the militia in cases of insurrection or invasion, but that in the present instance, there was neither invasion nor insurrection. They added, that the same constitution which conferred upon the Union the right of calling forth the militia, reserved to the states that of naming the officers; and that consequently (as they understood the clause) no officer of the Union had any right to command the militia, even during war, except the president in person: and in this case they were ordered to join an army commanded by another individual. These absurd and pernicious doctrines received the sanction not only of the governors and legislative bodies, but also of the courts of justice in both states; and the federal government was constrained to raise elsewhere the troops which it required.

The only safeguard which the American Union, with all the relative perfection of its laws, possesses against the dissolution which would be produced by a great war, lies in its probable exemption from that calamity. Placed in the centre of an immense continent, which offers a boundless field for human industry, the