Skip to main content

Full text of "Political Science Of The State"

See other formats


POLITICAL SCIENCE.
again, is divided between the particular state and the country
or union, so that it ought to be strong in order to bear the
strain of two cords pulling, it may be, in different directions.
Further, there will be parties created by a federal union
itself, considered as a constitution, as well as by differences of
interests in different parts of it, if it be a large country. The
formation of the union may have grown out of needs which
were different in different parts, so that all will not find that
it affords them equal or similar protection. There must also
be interests of production, dependent on soil and climate,
which will not be reconciled or equally aided by legislation.
One part of a country wants a tariff, another wants to be with-
out a tariff. But a majority must govern. Hence, the minor-
ity, which may well be predominant in one quarter, may
complain of the tyranny of another quarter of a common
country.
It will not seem strange, then, that some writers should
consider a federal government, owing to its nice balances in
regard to division of power between the union and the mem-
bers, and in regard to the conflicting interests of the parts,
as a peculiarly delicate and almost unadjustablc framework.
"The federative system/' says Mr. Guizat (Hist, of Civ.,
Lect iv.), "is one which evidently requires the greatest ma-
turity of reason, of morality, of civilization in the society to
which it is applied. Yet we find that this was the kind of
government which the feudal system attempted to establish ;
for feudalism, as a whole, was truly a confederation." With-
out stopping to insist on the differences in these forms of pol-
ity, the resemblances of which Mr. Guizot docs not point out,
although well aware of them, we find his judgment to be most
true in respect to the difficulty of establishing a federal sys-
tem in a world of ignorance and brute passions* It is certain
that when a half-barbarous independence prevails and the
sense of order runs low, where men fight their own private
battles and are a law to themselves, the states which they
inhabit are equally independent and cannot submit to the re-
straining power of a central government