any sort of government which they chose for this new community. Had they have done so, we should never have heard of the State of Pennsylvania, or the Commonwealth of Virginia. In that event, none of these former communities would have possessed sovereignty, the essential attribute of a State, for all would have sunk and dwindled into mere municipalities, bodies corporate but not politic, created or permitted to exist, not by their own will, but at the will and pleasure of this other more august being "The Nation" by whatever name that "Nation" might have been pleased to baptise itself. But the patriot Sages of that day did not choose so to do.
Nor was this decision the result of any "State pride," or designed "to find advocates" in any "prejudice," although that prejudice might be "honest." No, it was dictated by that profound and sagacious wisdom which can see the future in the past. These patriot Sages had read, and well knew, that Communities occupying different territories of wide extent, situated under different climates, professing different religions, long governed by different laws, having different manners, habits, customs, occupations, and, of course, many different and conflicting interests, could never be melted down into a single Society, and kept together as such, but by a much stronger power than any which they thought it either safe or prudent to create. Such communities, while separate and distinct, might be well and easily confederated, nay, even united, for many purposes useful to all and essential to some, and still continue to enjoy liberty in peace. But the day which should see them compressed into one Society, to be governed by a single overruling consolidated government, would be the eve of that on which their Freedom must be sacrificed to the power of an interested majority, in the very temple dedicated to its perpetual worship, unless the victim might be saved by arms.
Convinced of this, there was not one Statesman in any of these different Colonies at that day, who even proposed, or who even conceived, so far as we know, the wild and mad project of establishing a single Society, to be composed of all the revolted Colonies, and to be regulated by a consolidated "National" government, stretching itself over all. This conception was the product
