It followed that truth could be
obtained by liberty within these limits. The community could take its
supply of information for granted; its codes it passed on through
school, church, and family, and the power to draw deductions from a
premise, rather than the ability to find the premise, was regarded as
the chief end of intellectual training.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ROLE OF FORCE, PATRONAGE AND PRIVILEGE
1
"IT has happened as was to have been foreseen," wrote Hamilton,
[Footnote: _Federalist,_ No. 15] "the measures of the Union have
not been executed; the delinquencies of the States have, step by step,
matured themselves to an extreme which has at length arrested all the
wheels of the national government and brought them to an awful
stand."... For "in our case the concurrence of thirteen distinct
sovereign wills is requisite, under the confederation, to the complete
execution of every important measure that proceeds from the Union."
How could it be otherwise, he asked: "The rulers of the respective
members... will undertake to judge of the propriety of the measures
themselves. They will consider the conformity of the thing proposed or
required to their immediate interests or aims; the momentary
conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All
this will be done, and in a spirit of interested and suspicious
scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons
of state which is essential to right judgment, and with that strong
predilection in favor of local objects which can hardly fail to
mislead the decision.
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