Page:A View of the Constitution.djvu/301

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CHAPTER XXXII.



OF THE PERMANENCE OF THE UNION.




Quassata respublica multa perderet et ornamenta dignitatis et præsidia stabilitatis suæ. Oratio pro Marcello.


Having thus endeavoured to delineate the general features of this peculiar and invaluable form of government, we shall conclude with adverting to the principles of its cohesion, and to the provisions it contains for its own duration and extension.

The subject cannot perhaps be better introduced than by presenting in its own words an emphatical clause in the Constitution.

The United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government, shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the executive when the legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence.

The Union is an association of the people of republics; its preservation is calculated to depend on the preservation of those republics. The people of each pledge themselves to preserve that form of government in all. Thus each becomes responsible to the rest, that no other form of government shall prevail in it, and all are bound to preserve it in every one.

But the mere compact, without the power to enforce it, would be of little value. Now this power can be no where so