Regionalism

“ For this reason, clusters of islands, a continent divided by many natural barriers, great rivers, ridges of mountains, and arms of the sea, are best fitted for becoming the nursery of independent and respectable nations. The distinction of states being clearly maintained, a principle of political life is established in every division, and the capital of every district, like the heart of an animal body, communicates with ease the vital blood and the national spirit to its members. ”

“ Thus, you see, a foreign region, settled and owned by the mother-country, may, with nearly equal propriety, be called either a colony or a province; while one that belongs to a nation or a kingdom by conquest or purchase is a province, and nothing else. Thus, for example, Canada is a province of Great Britain, won from the French by conquest, as you will learn to-morrow evening. From this you may see, that although a province may, yet a colony can no more exist within the boundaries of a mother-country, than can a man live at home and abroad at one and the same time. ”

“ Within this vast empire there are geographic provinces, separate in physical conditions, into which American colonization has flowed, and in each of which a special society has developed, with an economic, political and social life of its own. ”

“ The inhabitants of these provinces, each community within its own borders, went on, from year to year, in their various pursuits of peaceful industry, governed mainly, in their relations to each other, by the natural sense of justice instinctive in man, and by those thousand local institutions and usages which are always springing up in all human communities under the influence of this principle. There were governors stationed over these provinces, whose main duty it was to collect and remit to the king the tribute which the province was required to furnish him. ”

“ But every difference between district and district, Province and Province, East and West, however great it seems when we think of our individual interests alone, is small in comparison with the greater interests, the nobler duties, which unite us all. No difference can be allowed to interfere for a moment with the supreme and sacred duty of Union. And every difference can be settled, with difficulty or with ease according as we are careless or enthusiastic in the devotion of thought, study, ingenuity and unselfish good-will, to perfecting ourselves in the essential art of living together. ”

“ It was obligatory that each should permanently live in the province he belonged to. Each province, each tribe and, in many parts each village, had its own language which was different from that of its neighbors. ”

“ All this is already known to the public at large. What is not popularly known is the fact that there are foreign provinces in the agricultural sections of the country. There whole counties and even a number of neighboring counties are populated by immigrants of the same race and nationality. Such provinces have become self-sufficient; they have their own towns, their own schools, churches, industries, stores, select local public officials of their own nationality, speak their own tongue, and live according to the traditions and spirit of their [Pg 131] home country. ”

“ In proof of this great and striking truth, no other argument requires to be offered, than an immediate reference to the experience of all ages and places: the various nations of the earth, the provinces of each nation, the towns, and even the villages of the same province, differ from each other in their accommodations; and are in every respect more flourishing, the greater their activity in establishing new channels of useful employ, calculated to procure the necessaries and comforts of life. ”

“ Every political movement, both in England and the United States, favors such an issue, and the sooner we acknowledge it, the better it will be for our cause, ourselves individually, and the destiny of our people in this country.
These Provinces have long been burdensome to the British nation, and her statesmen have long since discovered and decided as an indisputable predicate in political economy, that any province as an independent state, is more profitable in a commercial [364] consideration to a country than when depending as one of its colonies. ”

“ Protection for the manufacturing North at the expense of the agricultural South—an old storm centre! Territorial Rights—once a speck in the west, not so large as a man's hand, and now beneath it, the wrangling and darkened land! ”

“ It may be well to pause here a moment and inquire into the causes which contribute so wonderfully to build up empire in our north-western domain. The territorial system of the United States has some analogy, it is true, to the colonial system of Great Britain— not the colonial system which existed in the days of the stamp act— but that which a wiser statesmanship has more recently inaugurated. The relation between the general government and our territories is like that of guardian and ward— the relation of a protector, not that of a master. ”

“ A coalescence of the people into bodies politic in territorial areas now became complete.
The territorial series enters into the plan of government of modern civilized nations. Among ourselves, for example, we have the township, the county, the state, and the United States; the inhabitants of each of which are an organized body politic with powers of local self-government. Each organization is in full vitality and performs its functions within a definite sphere in which it is supreme. ”

“ I am more and more convinced—the federation of the provinces, each independent as to itself, but mutually united by the common bond of their common interests, like the Republic of the Swiss cantons, is the sole guarantee of freedom. ”

“ And yet this region has no sea coast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one Nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco.
"But separate our common Country into two nations, as designed by the present Rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets, not, perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations. ”

“ They occupied a region surpassed by no other on the continent, for grandeur and beauty united, and inherited from this or some other source, a mental constitution of noble structure, which placed them in the fore-front of their race, and when united, no tribe on this continent could stand before them. ”

“ What do we find has been, and is, the tendency of the peoples of this continent? Does not history show, and do not modern and existing tendencies declare, that the lines of cleavage among them lie along the lines of latitude? Men spread from east to west, and from east to west the political lines, which mean the lines of diversity, extend. The central spaces are, and will be yet more, the great centres of population. ”

“ The reason is that, like any other continent, though, in its incidentals, it is the history of a vast region, inhabited by peoples possessing certain traits of physical affinity and living for a few short spells under administrative unity yet, in its essentials, it is the history of many separate countries which have, throughout the ages, been inhabited by many distinct peoples, with different languages, philosophies, and civilizations, and organized for the most part into sovereign states, ruled by their own kings or emperors. ”

“ Exclusive of those general characteristics, each province has its own, founded on the government, climate, mode of husbandry, customs, and peculiarity of circumstances. Europeans submit insensibly to these great powers, and become, in the course of a few generations, not only Americans in general, but either Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or provincials under some other name. Whoever traverses the continent must easily observe those strong differences, which will grow more evident in time. ”

“ Now, the most notable fact in this enumeration is the presence, in addition to the parent nation at the centre of the Empire, of daughter nations at the circumference; and it is this fact above all others that gives a unique interest and character to the strange political organism we are considering. For everything else in the relations between the parts of the Empire we may find perhaps a parallel elsewhere; the existence of a number of national centres and national governments within one political system is an entirely new phenomenon. ”

“ These colonies have now been transformed into eight independent nations, extending to our very borders, seven of them Republics like ourselves, with whom we have an immensely growing commercial and must have, and have already, important political connections, with reference to whom our situation is neither distant nor detached, whose political principles and systems of government, congenial with our own, must and will have an action and counteraction upon us and ours to which we cannot be indifferent if we would. ”

“ But if a local government, entirely or principally, derives its immediate origin from the locality itself, it naturally tends to clash with the central authority, or with the general administration;—the tendency being greater or less as its territory is larger or smaller, as its immediate origin is more or less popular, and as its attributes are more or less extensive. ”

“ But with a system of representation so complete as ours, aided by the facilities furnished by modern science and art for the circulation of opinion, these difficulties disappear, and with a proper constitutional definition, and establishment of the true functions of the central and local governments, the superficies of a territory, or the number of its inhabitants have not necessarily anything to do with the practicability of combining their political interests under one central administration. ”

“ The division of a country into regions, provinces, districts, and communes, as in France, will naturally depend on the traditions, the specific circumstances, and the particular nature of each country. We can only point out here the two fundamental and indispensable principles which must be put into effect by any country seriously trying to organize a free society. First: all organizations must proceed by way of federation from the base to the summit, from the commune to the coordinating association of the country or nation. ”

“ But when they grew stronger and more numerous, they began to extend their territories; and, as it is natural for men to seek their own convenience, the desire of more fertile and agreeable habitations tempted them southward. There is land enough to the north and west of their settlements, which they may occupy with as good right as can be shown by the other European usurpers, and which neither the English nor Spaniards will contest; but of this cold region, they have enough already, and their resolution was to get a better country. ”

“ Intimately bound up with the race are of course the folk-lore of a district, and what we are now pleased to call provincialisms, but which are more properly nationalisms, showing us the real texture of our language ”

“ So little attention has been hitherto paid to American affairs, that I generally find the vast territories now distributed amongst the New States, classed as provinces, or counties, belonging to one kingdom, and not as empires occupying half a world. ”

“ That the welfare of a sparse and widely­ scattered population of British subjects of European origin, already inhabiting these remote and unorganized territories, would be materially enhanced by the formation therein of political institutions bearing analogy, as far as circumstances will admit, to those which exist in the several provinces of this Dominion. ”

“ The idea of a country arises only when a nation, either homogeneous or composed of several races, establishes itself in a region the boundaries of which may be defined and defended against aggression from without. Political geography takes account of the partition of the earth amongst organized communities, dealing with the relation of races to regions, and of nations to countries, and considering the conditions of territorial equilibrium and instability. ”

“ The East and the West, the South and the North, the interests of maritime States and land-locked States, the ideals and interests of industrial and agricultural States, and many other contrasts, are too great for it to be possible to govern a Federal World State by the same institutions as a State of ordinary size and composition. ”

“ The extent of territory, likewise, would be so great, that, were it inhabited by the same people throughout, it must necessarily present such varied local interests, that some parts of so extensive a colony would be more liable to suffer neglect, from ignorance, or from clashing interests, than a less extent of country would be. ”

“ At present they were like the separate filaments of flax before the thread is formed, without strength because without connection; but union would make them strong and even formidable. Many of the inhabitants of the Province were of the British race, and, though the fierce fighting animals of those happy islands were said to abate their natural fire and intrepidity, when removed to a foreign clime, yet, with their people this was not so. ”

“ The vast physiographic provinces of the country formed the basis for the development of natural economic and social areas, comparable in their size, industrial resources, and spirit, to nations of the Old World. ”

“ Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. ”