Another of the new powers now proposed to be given to the Union was that of protecting and upholding the governments of the States. I have already had occasion to explain the relations of the Confederation to its members in a time of internal disturbance and peril; and have given to the incapacity of that government to afford any aid in such emergencies great prominence among the causes which led to the revision of the federal system.[45] Under that system the States had been so completely sovereign, and so independent of each other in all that related to their internal concerns, that the government of any one of them might have been subverted without the possibility of an authorized and regulated interference by the rest. The constitutional and republican liberty that had been established in these States after the Revolution had freed them from the dominion of England, was at that period a new and untried experiment; and in order that we of this generation may be able to appreciate the importance of the guaranty proposed to be introduced into the Constitution of the United States, it is necessary for us to look somewhat farther than the particular circumstances of the commotions in New England that marked the year 1787 as an era of especial danger to these republican governments. It is, in fact, necessary for us to remember the contemporaneous history of Europe, and to observe how the events that were taking place in the Old World necessarily acted upon our condition, prospects, and welfare.