this deficiency, though no adequate justification of it. As to the general comparison of the state of literature and science in England and on the continent, it may perhaps be said with safety, that France stands at least as high in both these departments, and Germany higher. But after making all proper abatement from the exaggerated pretensions of some English writers, who are generally not those best able to support such claims by their own productions, there will still remain to England the incontestible praise of great literary and scientific activity and eminence. The country is certainly one of the central points from which the light of knowledge is now distributed through the various regions of the civilized and Christian world.

I reserve for a separate chapter a few remarks on the maritime power and pretensions of England.

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CHAP. VIII.

THE BALANCE OF POWER.

THE several states of which I have now taken a very imperfect survey, though really independent of each other for the purpose of their internal administration, and nominally for all purposes, have still from their first establishment formed, in substance, one vast and irregular body politic. The community of their origin, languages, and political and religious institutions, but especially their contiguous geographical situation, necessarily created among them very intimate relations of various descriptions. Tổ superintend and control to a certain extent, the relations between individuals, is the object of government; and where all the parties are confessedly subject to the same common institutions, it is accomplished with ease and success. It has been the great misfortune of Europe, that although the several states have always formed, for many important purposes, one political community, they have never acknowledged for these, or any other objects, any common authority. Hence there has always existed a large class of interests, beyond the reach of the existing establishments, in

tended to adjust conflicting claims, and preserve the public peace. A party, which conceives itself to be injured in an affair belonging to this category, has no common tribunal to appeal to for redress; and must either submit in silence to the supposed wrong, or do itself justice by force. In every conflict of interests, each party being judge in its own. case, naturally conceives itself to be in the right; and nothing would prevent a recurrence to force in every such instance but considerations of policy. Hence, whenever there is the least probability that a party, either by its own resources, or by such assistance as it can procure, will be able to obtain any advantage in an open struggle, an appeal to arms is resorted to at once. Perpetual war is, therefore, of necessity, the basis of the international system of a cluster of sovereign states, thus situated in regard to each other. We find, accordingly, that perpetual war has been in practice the basis of their actual relations, from the earliest period up to the present day; and it is now universally received as the leading axiom in what is called public law, that nations are natural enemies exactly in proportion to the extent of their natural and habitual relations. Through the whole quarter of the globe subject to this system, the nations that border on each other are regarded as natural enemies, because the relations between them are more close and intricate than between any others. Thus the science of practical politics in Europe, instead

of being founded, as is sometimes said, on the same basis with that of morals, proceeds upon a directly opposite principle. Morality, or the law of nature, has established a community of interest and feeling among individuals. It tells them, that they are made to live together, and that their sympathy will increase in proportion to the increasing intimacy of their relations. But the public law of Europe has consecrated the contrary maxim, that nations naturally hate each other; and that the extent of their relations is the precise measure of their mutual hostility. And such is the vice of the European system, that the principle, however odious in theory, is true in fact, and must be admitted and acted upon by every practical politician.

Here then we see demonstrated by contrast in the general European system, still more forcibly, because upon a larger scale, than in the German confederacy, the superiority of the political institutions of the United States; where politics and morals coincide in their foundations, and where between communities, as between individuals, the extent of intercourse is the measure of sympathy. and not of hatred. The United States form, like Europe, a vast body politic, composed of inde. pendent communities, nearly equal in number to the European; and though now inferior in population, destined probably, at no very distant period, to equal or surpass them in this respect, as well as in the other. But, by the wise and happy institu

tion of a common government, the conflicting interests between individuals of different states are adjusted in the same easy and quiet way as the rest; and the separate states having no relations with each other, or with foreign powers, in their sovereign capacity, they exist only for the purpose of internal administration. By this simple and excellent provision, an entirely new character is given

to

the international concerns of these communities. Perpetual peace forms the basis of their relations, instead of perpetual war; and the system which has so long passed for the idle dream of a few benevolent enthusiasts, is actually realised, and exists in full practice through a whole quarter of the globe. It is in the effects of the union, still more than in those of our pure and simple forms of administration, that we immediately feel the great advantages of our political situation. On the other hand, it is principally to the purity and simplicity of these forms, that the union owes its establishment and stability; as it is chiefly the artificial and unnatural form of the European institutions, which stands in the way of a general government there; and fastens upon that continent, as it did upon the communities of ancient Greece, the curse of interminable civil war; a plague which consumed the vital strength of those glorious states, and, unless it can be checked, will, in like manner, ruin Europe.

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