Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/365

CHAP. XXIX The first four of these are all due to the same cause, viz. the existence within one government, which ought to be able to speak and act in the name and with the united strength of the nation, of distinct centres of force, organized political bodies into which part of the nation's strength has flowed, and whose resistance to the will of the majority of the whole nation is likely to be more effective than could be the resistance of individuals, because such bodies have each of them a government, a revenue, a militia, a local patriotism to unite them, whereas individual recalcitrants, however numerous, would be unorganized, and less likely to find a legal standing ground for opposition. The gravity of the first two of the four alleged faults has been exaggerated by most writers, who have assumed, on insufficient grounds, that Federal governments are necessarily weak. Let us, however, see how far America has experienced such troubles from these features of a Federal system.

I. In its early years, the Union was not successful in the management of its foreign relations. Few popular governments are, because a successful foreign policy needs in a world such as ours conditions which popular governments seldom enjoy. In the days of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, the Union put up with a great deal of ill-treatment from France as well as from England. It drifted rather than steered into the war of 1812. The conduct of that war was hampered by the opposition of the New England States. The Mexican war of 1846 was due to the slaveholders; but as the combination among the Southern leaders which entrapped the nation into that conflict might have been equally successful in a unified country, the blame need not be laid at the door of Federalism. Of late years the principle of abstention from Old World complications has been so heartily and consistently adhered to that the capacities of the Federal system for the conduct of foreign affairs have been little tried; and the likelihood of any danger from abroad is so slender that it may be practically ignored. But when a question of external policy arises which interests only one part of the Union, the existence of States feeling themselves specially affected is apt to have a strong and probably an unfortunate influence. Only in this way can the American government be deemed likely to suffer in its foreign relations from its Federal character.