Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Above all, before considering the case of America as parallel with that
of France, the statesmen of the latter country should have observed one
grand and radical difference. In America, after the great change in
their system had been effected by shaking off the sovereignty of the
mother country, the states arranged their new government so as to make
the least possible alteration in the habits of their people. They left
to a future and more convenient opportunity, what farther innovation
this great change might render necessary; being more desirous to fix the
general outlines of a firm and orderly government, although containing
some anomalies, than to cast all existing authorities loose, in order
that they might produce a constitution more regular in theory, but far
less likely to be put into effectual execution, than those old forms
under which the people had grown up, and to which they were accustomed
to render regular obedience. They abolished no nobility, for they had
none in the colonies to abolish; but in fixing the basis of their
constitution, they balanced the force and impulse of the representative
body of the states by a Senate, designed to serve the purposes answered
by the House of Lords in the British Constitution. The governors of the
different states also, in whose power the executive administration of
each was reposed, continued to exercise the same duties as before,
without much other change, than that they were named by their
fellow-citizens, instead of being appointed by the sovereign of the
mother country. The Congress exercised the rights which success had
given them over the loyalists, with as much temperance as could be
expected after the rage of a civil war. Above all, the mass of the
American population was in a sound healthy state, and well fitted to
bear their share in the exercise of political rights. They were
independent, as we have noticed, and had comparatively few instances
amongst them of great wealth, contrasted with the most degrading
indigence. They were deeply imbued with a sense of religion, and the
morality which is its fruit. They had been brought up under a free
government, and in the exercise of the rights of freemen; and their
fancies were not liable to be excited, or their understandings made
giddy, with a sudden elevation to privileges, the nature of which was
unknown to them. The republic of America, moreover, did not consist of
one huge and populous country, with an overgrown capital, where the
legislative body, cooped up in its precincts like prisoners, were liable
to be acted upon by the applauses or threats of a desperate rabble. Each
state of America carries on its own immediate government, and enjoys
unmolested the privilege of adopting such plans as are best suited to
their own peculiar situation, without embarrassing themselves with that
ideal uniformity, that universal equality of rights, which it was the
vain object of the French Constituent Assembly to establish. The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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