Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/35

Rh and by the error, as I presume to think it, committed by the founders of the constitution, in imitating the great centralised govermentsgovernments [sic] of military Europe, and creating an elective presidency which, with the patronage it commands, must be the prize and the stimulant of intrigue, faction, and personal ambition. It would be difficult to stand at Washington, amidst the abortive streets of that factitious capital, and not to feel that they are typical of a great political misconception. What Providence intends in the New World apparently is not a mere reproduction of the European nations on a colossal scale, but a great development of humanity, for which Federation, with its infinite power of expansion, its multiplied centres of independent life, its freedom of local action, seems to be the destined mould. It appeared to me that so far as American institutions were local, they were good: good, at least, in full proportion to the virtue, or, to speak plainly, to the Christianity of the people in the state or district, and no institutions can be more. The town meetings, where the people manage their own affairs, and which form the solid basis of American politics, are probably the soundest institutions in the world. Nearly as much may be said of the State legislatures in the better States. It is in the central government that such evil as there is has hitherto had its main seat. There are the prizes for which the great parties, with all their tyrannical and unpatriotic organisations, are formed. There are the “spoils” which, according to the evil saying of Jackson, “belong to the victor” in the unhallowed strife. There the great infirmity of all representative systems makes itself fully felt. The people would generally chose the best candidate, if he were placed before them. In the choice of the candidates lies the difficulty.