The Republican party have been blamed because their theory and practice alike tend toward a consolidation of power, and a strengthening of the hands of the government at Washington. It is in this that lies their chief claim to support. Local government is an excellent thing; it is the greatest of the inventions of our inventive race, the chief security for continued freedom possessed by a people already free. This local government is consistent with a powerful executive; between the village municipality and Congress, between the cabinet and the district council of selectmen, there can be no conflict: it is State sovereignty, and the pernicious heresy of primary allegiance to the State, that have already proved as costly to the Republic as they are dangerous to her future. It has been said that America, under the Federal system, unites the freedom of the small State with the power of the great; but though this is true, it is brought about, not through the federation of the States, but through that of the townships and districts. The latter are the true units to which the consistent Republican owes his secondary allegiance. It is, perhaps, only in the tiny New England States that Northern men care much about their commonwealth; a citizen of Pennsylvania or New York never talks of his State, unless to criticise its legislature. After all, where intelligence and education are all but universal, where a spirit of freedom has struck its roots into the national heart of a great race, there can be no danger in centralization, for the power that you strengthen is that of the whole people, and a nation can have nothing to fear from itself. In watching the measures of the Radicals, we must remember that they have still to guard their country against great dangers. The war did not last long enough to destroy anti-republicanism along with slavery. The social system of the Carolinas was upset; but the political fabric built upon a slavery foundation in such “free” States as New York and Maryland is scarcely shaken.