Upon grounds of political economy, a life-long study to them, they must
have viewed with vast suspicion the ability of a people to attain
independence, who are trammelled by a blockade which they are themselves
fain to acknowledge effectual, prevented from the usual methods of
subsistence by inferiority of population, and under dreadful
apprehensions from the existence in their midst of millions of
malcontent slaves. They have not needed a subtle knowledge of political
philosophy to teach them that during the progress of the war the Federal
idea has received new strength, which its success will make permanent,
and which only total failure can diminish. Their favorite doctrine, that
governments within a government cannot exist, and that our Constitution
is weakened by the accession of every new State and the rise of every
new disagreement, is meeting its refutation every day. A concentration
of extraordinary power at the centre does not seem to shatter every bond
of union, as they have predicted,--and the States hold together and work
together with amazing zeal for so feeble a tie as that they have
represented.
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