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the nation only affects a few of the chief interests of society; it represents an immense but remote country, and claims a feeling of patriotism which is vague and ill-defined; but the authority of the states controls every individual citizen at every hour and in all circumstances; it protects his property, his freedom, and his life; and when we recollect the traditions, the customs, the prejudices of local and familiar attachment with which it is connected, we cannot doubt the superiority of a power which is interwoven with every circumstance that renders the love of one's native country instinctive to the human heart.
Since legislators are unable to obviate such dangerous collisions as occur between the two sovereignties which co-exist in the federal system, their first object must be, not only to dissuade the confederate states from warfare, but to encourage such institutions as may promote the maintenance of peace. Hence it results that the federal compact cannot be lasting unless there exists in the communities which are leagued together, a certain number of inducements to union which render their common dépendance agreeable, and the task of the government light; and that system cannot succeed without the presence of favorable circumstances added to the influence of good laws. All the peoples which have ever formed a confederation have been held together by a certain number of common interests, which served as the intellectual ties of association.
But the sentiments and the principles of man must be taken into consideration as well as his immediate interest. A certain uniformity of civilization is not less necessary to the durability of a confederation, than a uniformity of interests in the states which compose it. In Switzerland the difference which exists between the canton of Uri and the canton of Vaud is equal to that between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries; and, properly speaking, Switzerland has never possessed a federal government. The union between these two cantons only subsists upon the map; and their discrepances would soon be perceived if an attempt were made by a central authority to prescribe the same laws to the whole territory.
One of the circumstances which most powerfully contribute to support the federal government in America, is that the states have not only similar interests, a common origin, and a common tongue, but that they are also arrived at the same stage of civilization; which
