Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/247

party. In a community of so great an extent as ours, contiguity becomes one of the strongest elements in forming party combinations, and distance one of the strongest elements in repelling them. The reason is, that nothing tends more powerfully to weaken the social or sympathetic feelings, than remoteness; and, in the absence of causes calculated to create aversion, nothing to strengthen them more, than contiguity. We feel intensely the sufferings endured under our immediate observation — when we would be almost indifferent, were they removed to a great distance from us. Besides, contiguity of situation usually involves a similarity of interests — especially, when considered in reference to those more remote — which greatly facilitates the formation of local combinations and parties in a country of extensive limits. If to this, we add other diversities — of pursuits, of institutions, origin, and the like, which not unusually exist in such cases, parties must almost necessarily partake, from the first, more or less, of a local character: and, by an almost necessary operation, growing out of the unequal fiscal action of the government, as explained in the preliminary discourse, must become entirely so, in the end, if not prevented by the resistance of powerful causes. We accordingly find, that such has been the case with us, under the operation of the present government. From the first, they assumed, in some degree, this character; and have since been gradually tending more and more to this form, until they have become, almost entirely, sectional. When they shall have become so entirely — (which