the rest of the world, and affect all the area that lies between the two oceans. The State set out as an isolated

and self-sufficing commonwealth. It is now merely a part of a far grander whole, which seems to be slowly absorbing its functions and stunting its growth, as the great tree stunts the shrubs over which its spreading boughs have begun to cast their shade.

I do not mean to say that the people have ceased to care for their States; far from it. They are proud of their States, even where there may be little to be proud of. That passionate love of competition which possesses English-speaking men, makes them eager that their State should surpass, in the number of the clocks it makes, the hogs it kills, the pumpkins it rears, the neighbouring States, that their particular star should shine at least as brightly as the other thirty-seven in the national flag. But if these commonwealths meant to their citizens what they did in the days of the Revolution, if they commanded an equal measure of their loyalty, and influenced as largely their individual welfare, the State legislatures would not be left to professionals or thirdrate men. The truth is that the State has shrivelled up. It retains its old legal powers over the citizens, its old legal rights as against the central government. But it does not interest its citizens as it once did. And as the central government overshadows it in one direction, so the great cities have encroached upon it in another. The population of a single city is sometimes a fourth or a fifth part of the whole population of the State; and

1 In 1782 Fisher Ames wrote: "Instead of feeling as a nation, a State is our country. We look with indifference, often with hatred, fear, and aversion to the other States."— Works, i. p. 113 (quoted by Von Holst). Even in 1811 Josiah Quincy said in Congress: "Sir, I confess it, the first public love of my heart is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There is my fireside there are the tombs of my ancestors."-Putnam's American Orations, i. p. 168. No one would speak in that strain now.

city questions interest this population more than State questions do, city officials have begun to rival or even to dwarf State officials.

Observe, however, that while the growth of the Union has relatively dwarfed the State, the absolute increase of the State in population has changed the character of the State itself. In 1790 seven of the thirteen original States had each of them less than 300,000, only one more than 500,000 inhabitants. Now at least twentythree have more than 1,000,000, and six of these more than 2,000,000. We must expect to find that, in spite of railroads and telegraphs, the individual citizens will know less of one another, will have less personal acquaintance with their leading men, and less personal interest in the affairs of the community than in the old days when the State was no more populous than an English county like Bedford or Somerset. Thus the special advantages of local government have to a large extent vanished from the American States of to-day. They are local bodies in the sense of having no great imperial interests to fire men's minds. They are not local in the sense of giving their members a familiar knowledge and a lively interest in the management of their affairs. Hamilton may have been right in thinking that the large States ought to be subdivided.1 At any rate it is to this want of direct local interest on the part of the people, that some of the faults of their legislatures may be ascribed.

The chief lesson which a study of the more vicious

1 On the other hand I have heard it argued that there are some large States in which the mischievous action of the multitude of a great city is held in check by the steadier rural voters. If such States had been subdivided, the subdivision which happened to contain the great city would lie at the mercy of this multitude.

Hamilton's reason seems to have been a fear that the States would be too strong for the National government.

among the State legislatures teaches, is that power does not necessarily bring responsibility in its train. Ishould be ashamed to write down so bald a platitude, were it not that it is one of those platitudes which are constantly forgotten or ignored. People who know well enough that, in private life, wealth or rank or any other kind of power is as likely to mar a man as to make him, to lower as to raise his sense of duty, have nevertheless contracted the habit of talking as if human nature changed when it entered public life, as if the mere possession of public functions, whether of voting or of legislating, tended of itself to secure their proper exercise. We know that power does not purify men in despotic governments, but we talk as if it did so in free governments. Every one would of course admit, if the point were put flatly to him, that power alone is not enough, but that there must be added to power, in the case of the voter, a direct interest in the choice of good men, in the case of the legislator, responsibility to the voters, in the case of both, a measure of enlightenment and honour. What the legislatures of the worst States show is not merely the need for the existence of a sound public opinion, for such a public opinion exists, but the need for methods by which it can be brought into efficient action upon representatives, who, if they are left to themselves, and are not individually persons with a sense of honour and a character to lose, will be at least as bad in public life as they could be in private. The greatness of the scale on which they act, and of the material interests they control, will do little to inspire them. New York and Pennsylvania are by far the largest and wealthiest States in the Union. Their legislatures are confessedly the worst.

CHAPTER XLVI

STATE POLITICS

In the last preceding chapters I have attempted to describe first the structure of the machinery of State governments, and then this machinery in motion as well as at rest, that is to say, the actual working of the various departments in their relations to one another. We may now ask, What is the motive power which sets and keeps these wheels and pistons going? What is the steam that drives the machine?

The steam is supplied by the political parties. In speaking of the parties I must, to some slight extent, anticipate what will be more fully explained in the later part of this volume: but it seems worth while to incur this inconvenience for the sake of bringing together all that refers specially to the States, and of completing the picture of their political life.1

The States evidently present some singular conditions for the development of a party system. They are self-governing communities with large legislative and administrative powers, existing inside a much greater community of which they are for many purposes inde

1 Many readers may find it better to skip this chapter until they have read those which follow (Chapters LIII.-LVI.) upon the history, tenets, and present condition of the great national parties.

pendent. They must have parties, and this community, the Federal Union, has also parties. What is the relation of the one set of parties to the other?

There are three kinds of relations possible, viz.

Each State might have a party of its own, entirely unconnected with the national parties, but created by State issues-i.e. advocating or opposing measures which fall within the exclusive competence of the State.

Each State might have parties which, while based upon State issues, were influenced by the national parties, and in some sort of affiliation with the latter.

The parties in each State might be merely local subdivisions of the national parties, the national issues and organizations swallowing up, or rather pushing aside, the State issues and the organizations formed to deal with them.

The nature of the State governments would lead us to expect to find the first of these relations existing. The sphere of the State is different, some few topics of concurrent jurisdiction excepted, from that of the National government. What the State can deal with, the National government cannot touch. What the National government can deal with lies beyond the province of the State. The State governor and legislature are elected without relation to the President and Congress, and when elected have nothing to do with those authorities. Hence a question fit to be debated and voted upon in Congress can seldom be a question fit to be also debated and voted upon in a State legislature, and the party formed for advocating its passage through Congress will have no scope for similar action within a State, while on the other hand a State party, seeking to carry some State law, will have no motive for approaching Congress, which

VOL. II