Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/493

 CH. VI.] legislation? The experience of the whole world is against any reliance for security and peace between neighbouring nations, under such circumstances. The Abbe Mably has forcibly stated in a single passage the whole result of human experience on this subject. "Neighbouring states," says he, "are naturally enemies of each other, unless their common weakness forces them to league in a confederate republic; and their constitution prevents the differences, that neighbourhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy, which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbours." This passage, as has been truly observed, at the same time points out the evil, and suggests the remedy.

§ 471. The same reasoning would apply with augmented force to the case of a dismemberment, when each state should by itself constitute a nation. The very inequalities in the size, the revenues, the population, the products, the interests, and even in the institutions and laws of each, would occasion a perpetual petty warfare of legislation, of border aggressions and violations, and of political and personal animosities, which, first or last, would terminate in the subjugation of the weaker to the arms of the stronger. In our further observations on this subject, it is not proposed to distinguish the case of several confederacies from that of a complete separation of all the states; as in a general sense the remarks apply with irresistible, if not with uniform, force to each.

§ 472. Does, then, the extent of our territory form