What Is A
Better Boundary Between Nations Than A Parallel Of Latitude, Or Even A
Natural Obstacle?
- What really keeps nations intact and apart?
- A
principle. When I can hear our young men say as proudly, 'our
Federation,' or 'our Country,' or 'our Kingdom,' as the young men of
other countries do, speaking of their own, then I shall have less
apprehension for the result of whatever trials the future may have in
store for us. It has been said that the Federal Constitution of the
United States has failed. I, Sir, have never said it. The Attorney-
General West told you the other night that he did not consider it a
failure; and I remember that in 1861, when in this House I remarked the
same thing, the only man who then applauded the statement was the
Attorney-General West, - so that it is plain he did not simply adopt the
argument for use the other night when advocating a Federal Union among
ourselves. It may be a failure for us, paradoxical as this may seem,
and yet not a failure for them. They have had eighty years' use of it,
and having discovered its defects, may apply a remedy and go on with it
eighty years longer. But we also were lookers on, who saw its defects
as the machine worked, and who have prepared contrivances by which it
can be improved and kept in more perfect order when applied to
ourselves. And one of the foremost statesmen in England, distinguished
alike in politics and literature, has declared, as the President of the
Council informed us, that we have combined the best parts of the
British and the American systems of government; an opinion deliberately
formed at a distance, without prejudice, and expressed without
interested motives of any description.
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