The new Government was purely an experiment.  In opposition to the fixed habits of mankind, it established suffrage practically universal, and representation so perfect that not one Legislative House only, but both Houses; not legislative officers only, but all officers, executive, ministerial, and even judicial, were directly or indirectly elected by the people.  The longest term of the senatorial trust was but six years, and the shortest only two, and even the tenure of the executive power was only four years.  This Government, betraying so much popular jealousy, was invested with only special and limited sovereignty.  The conduct of merely municipal affairs was distributed within the States, among Governments even more popular than the federal structure, and without whose ever-renewed support that structure must fall.

The Government thus constituted, so new, so complex and artificial, was to be consolidated, in the midst of difficulties at home, and of dangers abroad.  The constitution had been adopted only upon convictions of absolute necessity, and with evanescent dispositions of compromise.  By nearly half of the people it was thought too feeble to sustain itself, and secure the rights for which governments are instituted among men.  By as many it was thought liable to be converted into an over-shadowing despotism, more formidable and more odious than the monarchy which had been subverted.  These conflicting opinions revealed themselves in like discordance upon every important question of administration, and were made the basis of parties, which soon became jealous and irreconcilable, and ultimately inveterate, and even in some degree disloyal.

These domestic feuds were aggravated by pernicious influences from Europe.  In the progress of western civilization, the nations of the earth had become social.  The new Republic could not, like the Celestial Empire, or that of Japan, confine itself within its own boundaries, and exist without national intercourse.  It had entered the family of nations.  But the position it was to assume, and the advantages it was to be allowed to enjoy, were yet to be ascertained and fixed.  Its independence, confessed to be only a doubtful experiment at home, was naturally thought ephemeral in Europe.  Its example was ominous, and the European Powers willingly believed that, if discountenanced and baffled, America would soon relapse into colonial subjugation.  Such prejudices were founded in the fixed habits of society.  Not only the thirteen colonies, but the whole American hemisphere, had been governed by European States from the period of its discovery.  The very soil belonged to the trans-atlantic monarchs by discovery, or by ecclesiastical gift.  Dominion over it attached by divine right to their persons, and drew after it obligations of inalienable allegiance upon those who became the inhabitants of the new world.  The new world was indeed divided between different powers, but the system of government