There is no difficulty in deciding upon the proper objects
of this expulsion. The polarity of the moral is as distinct
as that of the material world. A politician as certainly
knows the point of the moral compass to which the system
of distributing wealth by law, inclines, as the mariner,
whether his needle points toward the north or the south.
The polarity of the re-eligibility of the president has been
seen in the re-eligibility of consuls Augustus and Bonaparte;
and that of individual patronage and legal parties of interest, is before our eyes in the present state of Europe.
The extent and situation of the territory of the United
States, enable them to resist this system more successfully
than any other nation. Extent keeps at a distance from
the bulk of the nation the calamities of war, and enables it
to reflect. Cut up into sections, not a single individual might
escape them. Small nations are continually exposed to the
artifice of legal wars, from the facilities for them furnished
by impinging territories; and are debarred from the use of
reason to detect the fraud, by the universality of the distraction they produce. But a nation possessed of extensive
territory. happily removed from real causes of collision
with other nations, like the United States, is peculiarly favoured by providence for the detection of this artifice (so
generally practised by ins and outs, and other parties of
interest) both as the pretext for it must be shallower, and the
national capacity for its detection by reflection and reason,
greater. The pledge for a free government arising from
the extent and situation of our territory is so transcendant,
that the enemies of a republican form of government craftily inculcate an opinion, that this form is not adapted for
an extensive territory; for the purpose of producing territorial divisions to discredit republican systems, by the
calamities to which impinging states are exposed from the
artifices of parties of interest; or with a design of transferring to their rival, monarchy, the advantage of extensive
territory, so important that it is at least doubtful whether a
greater portion of human happiness would not result from
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THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES.
