168 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OP 



THE UNION. 



SECOND LECTURE. 



Having considered, at the close of my last lecture, the partition of 

 British America into the several colonial governments, 1 propose now 

 to ask your attention to the events and influences which combined with- 

 out consolidating them — in other words, the formation, or, more pro- 

 perly, ihegroivth of the Union. For this process there were needed two 

 power^of an opposing nature — a centralizing and a repulsive power — 

 the former to give connexion, the latter to preserve the distinctive local 

 organization. 



Let me remark, by way of introduction, that in studying the history of 

 the Union the mind is peculiarly exposed to that unconscious delusion, so 

 frequent in historical studies, which consists in allowing notions and im- 

 pressions of the present time to enter inappropriately into our estimate 

 of the past. It is thus that we often deceive ourselves with unper- 

 ceived anachronisms. The complicated frame-work of our political 

 system has been lor more than half a century acquiring strength and 

 solidity by the actual Working of the system and by the imperceptible 

 processes of time. There are the countless interchanges arising from an 

 active commercial spirit, the progress of the arts is speeding and facili- 

 tating intercourse to an extent never dreamed of in the olden time, 

 there are the thousands of social affinities of interest and affection by 

 which fellowship is created and confirmed between various and remote 

 sections of the country. Conceive for an instant the possibility of a 

 knowledge of the written intercommunication, on any one day, trans- 

 mitted by the agency of the post office or the electric telegraph, what 

 a story it would tell of strong and incalculable affinity — j^^'^^tical, com- 

 mercial, social — of community of traffic and of feeling, precious and 

 far-reaching ! So habitually familiar to us is all this, that when we 

 turn to an early era of our history we are apt, unawares, to carry our 

 present associations back where they do not belong. Familiar as we 

 are in our day and generation with the recurrence and easy gathering 

 of conventions, composed of delegates from all parts of the Union, for 

 every variety of purpose — ecclesiastical and political, scientific, educa- 

 tional, commercial, agricultural, and fanatical — we are prone to under- 

 rate the difficulties of intercourse in former times of more laborious trav- 

 elling. In the early colonial period the colonies took little heed of each 

 other. There was interdependence between a colony and the mother- 

 country, but not between one colony and another. This was, perhaps, 

 a consequence of the policy which was restriction on the commerce and 

 manufactures of the colonies. It was, in a great measure, in accord- 

 ance, too, with the feelings of the colonists, for Old England long had 

 a place in their hearts ; but what was New England to Virginia, or 

 Virfjinia to New Enfjland? '■'■Home''' was the significant and endearing 

 title which continued to be apphed, with a permanence of habit that is 



