Did the limits which I have prescribed to myself in this address allow it, I could easily adduce the history of the Swiss Cantons, the Netherlands and Holland, the Hanseatic League, the little states formerly around the Baltic, and even the Germanic Confederation, as confirmation strong of the truth of the positions which I have taken in favor of the federative system. Indeed I might go farther than this, and show that the feudal aristocracy of the middle ages, horrible as was its oppression, calamitous as were its petty wars, and feuds, and dissensions, intolerable as was that anarchical confusion which it generated in Europe towards the close of the tenth century, was nevertheless the instrument which kept alive the mind of man in the great nations of Christendom, by splitting up the powers of government among the Baronial Lords, and thereby preventing that fatal tendency to centralism and consolidation, which would inevitably have shrouded the mind of Europe in inextricable darkness. Far be from me that vain presumption which would dare to scan the mysterious plans of Providence; but I have always thought that the regeneration of the mind of Europe required that the barbarian should come from the North and the East--that an Alaric, a Genseric and an Attila, should pour out the vials of their wrath upon the Roman's head--that the monstrous, corrupt and gigantic fabric of his power might be broken to pieces by barbarian hordes, who had not the genius and political skill requisite to establish another great military despotism on its ruins. After this review I turn with pleasure again to our own system of government. We have seen how stimulating were the little republics of Greece and of Italy, to the genius of those countries. But their systems were not made for peaceable endurance--they were too disunited, too turbulent, too prone to civil wars; hence they either fell a prey to some ambitious state in their own system, or invited by their reckless internal dissensions the foreigner into their land, who broke down their institutions, overthrew their liberty, and imposed upon their submissive necks the galling yoke of military despotism. But those venerated fathers of our republics, who framed the federal constitution, came forward to their task in full view of the history of the republics of the ancient and modern world, with that almost holy spirit of freedom and patriotism which gave them that undaunted courage and unremitting perseverance that enabled them to wade through the blood and turmoil of the revolution. They completed their task, and the wisdom and virtue of our confederacy did sanction their work, and long may that work endure if administered in that spirit of purity and virtue which inspired those who framed it.