incompetent,--that we had indeed preserved our national unity, but only
at the frightful cost of sinking to a lower plane of national life.
[Sidenote: The English method of nation-making] [Sidenote: Pacific
tendencies of federalism]

But federalism, with its pacific implications, was not an invention of
the Teutonic mind. The idea was familiar to the city communities of
ancient Greece, which, along with their intense love of self-government,
felt the need of combined action for warding off external attack. In
their Achaian and Aitolian leagues the Greeks made brilliant attempts
toward founding a nation upon some higher principle than that of mere
conquest, and the history of these attempts is exceedingly
interesting and instructive. They failed for lack of the principle
of representation, which was practically unknown to the world until
introduced by the Teutonic colonizers of the Roman empire. Until the
idea of power delegated by the people had become familiar to men's minds
in its practical bearings, it was impossible to create a great nation
without crushing out the political life in some of its parts. Some
centre of power was sure to absorb all the political life, and grow at
the expense of the outlying parts, until the result was a centralized
despotism. Hence it came to be one of the commonplace assumptions of
political writers that republics must be small, that free government
is practicable only in a confined area, and that the only strong and
durable government, capable of maintaining order throughout a vast
territory, is some form of absolute monarchy. [Sidenote: Fallacy of the
notion that republics must be small]

It was quite natural that people should formerly have held this opinion,
and it is indeed not yet quite obsolete, but its fallaciousness will
become more and more apparent as American history is better understood.