In our American constitution-making one often heard the question, “What will become of the liberties of the citizen of the state under the federation?” The answer was well made at the time: “Will not the citizen of the state still be the citizen of the state, and will not the state continue to guarantee him all that it can now guarantee him? Does he not also pass under the protection of the federation as truly as the citizens of any of the states? All that the federation proposes to do is to take charge of the functions that concern the things for which the federation is founded, and these are things to which the states are not so well adjusted as a united government.” And so it proved in practice. No American has ever had reason to think his liberty lessened because the union was formed; and he has been immensely stronger in all his rights on the high seas, in traveling abroad, in being safe from the burdens of foreign wars, and in his rights of trade in the uttermost parts of the earth; for he has been the citizen of a great federation of small states. Applying the analogy to the suggested federation of the world it appears that under such a system the citizen of France, Great Britain, Russia, or the United States would in nowise lose his rights under his own government, and he would gain vastly in relief from burdens. He would no longer have to think of wars, his trade relations would be adjusted in such a way that no other man could have what he did not have. In short, for all the purposes for which the federation was founded he would stand on equal footing with any other man, and for the purposes for which his own state existed he would have all the rights he had before. His only losses would be in casting off the burdens that grow out of international rivalry under the present system. One of the things for which the American union was created was the payment of the revolutionary debts. Compared with the debts the colony had incurred individually before the revolution, and compared with their ability to pay them at the time, these debts were large, although they proved, under the union, a very small burden. It was the sense of security under a government which had eliminated the possibility of interstate wars that made the burden light.