ABSTRACT
The necessity of a General Government proceeds from the propensity of the States to pursue their particular interests, in opposition to the general interest. It was possible only for a people who had been trained, and who had trained themselves, in the virtue of self-government. Without that training it would have been impossible to harmonize the philosophic assumptions of the Declaration of Independence with the practical controls of the federal Constitution. For those receptive to this belief, the turn from darkness to light becomes very largely a matter of personal choice; a matter of self-government. Because self-government can bring a spiritual, as well as a political, rebirth it seems probable that, with increasing national complexities, increasing numbers of Americans will seek to make this turn. On the contrary, it was believed that sectarian competition would continue to develop moral self-reliance, and with it that capacity for self-government on which, as Madison said, for "rest all the political experiments".
