But the most beneficial influence produced upon literature and character under the federative system of government, springs from the operation of the state governments themselves. We have seen that the monarchical government, in a large state, fails to stimulate learning and elicit great activity of character, because its influence does not pervade the whole body politic--while the centre may be properly acted on, the confines are in a state of inextricable languor. A great consolidated republican government, if such an one could exist, would be little better than a monarchy. The aspirants for the high offices in such a nation, would all look up to the government as the centre for promotion, and not to the people. The talent and ambition of the country would have to make the same weary pilgrimage here as in the monarchies--to travel up to court--to fawn upon and flatter the men whom fortune had thrown into the high places of the government. The stimulus which such a government could afford, must necessarily be of the most partial and capricious character. A system of state governments preserves the sovereignty unimpaired in every portion of the country; it carries the beneficial stimulus, which government itself is capable of applying to literature and character, to every division of the people. Under such governments as these, if properly regulated, and not overawed or corrupted by central power--it matters very little where a man's destiny may place him, whether he may be born on the borders of the Lakes, on the banks of the Mississippi, or even in future times on the distant shores of the Pacific--the sovereignty is with him--the action of the state and federal governments reaches him in his distant home as effectually as if he had been born in the federal metropolis, or on the banks of the Potomac, or the waters of the Chesapeake.