The Constitution of the United States was the means by which republican liberty was saved from the consequences of impending anarchy; it secured that liberty to posterity, and it left it to depend on their fidelity to the Union. It is morally certain that the formation of some general government, stronger and more efficient than any which had existed since the independence of the States had been declared, had become necessary to the continued existence of the Confederacy. It is equally certain, that, without the preservation of the Union, a condition of things must at once have ensued, out of which wars between the various provinces of America must have grown. The alternatives, therefore, that presented themselves to the generation by whom the Constitution was established, were either to devise a system of republican government that would answer the great purposes of a lasting union, or to resort to something in the nature of monarchy. With the latter, the institutions of the States must have been sooner or later crushed;--for they must either have crumbled away in the new combinations and fearful convulsions that would have preceded the establishment of such a power, or else they must have fallen speedily after its triumph had been settled. With the former alternative, the preservation of the States, and of all the needful institutions which marked their separate existence, though a difficult, was yet a possible result. To this preservation of the separate States we owe that power of minute local administration, which is so prominent and important a feature of our American liberty. To this we are indebted for those principles of self-government which place their own interests in the hands of the people of every distinct community, and which enable them, by means of their own laws, to defend their own particular institutions against encroachments from without. Finally, the Constitution of the United States made the people of these several provinces one nation, and gave them a standing among the nations of the world. Let any man compare the condition of this country at the peace of 1783, and during the four years which followed that event, with its present position, and he will see that he must look to some other cause than its merely natural and material resources to account for the proud elevation which it has now reached.