14 each retaining its relative independence while revolving around the sun, the centre of the system. This magna charta, this law of universal gravitation, is not an absolute sovereignty. If it were, the equilibrium would be at once destroyed, and the stars would fall upon one another, like the nations of the earth when one of them seeks to enslave its fellow.
Absolutism in government has not proved durable upon this earth, and never will. Every territorial conquest requires a new and additional force in the central power, and these forces uniting and increasing, cause the gradual degeneration of the government into a tyranny which the citizens cannot endure, and discontent and rebellion supervene. The Russian empire is again giving to the world this grand, severe lesson.
The pressure increasing, and the welfare of the community daily losing ground, individuals begin to pull upon the chain, and sooner or later the chain snaps. assume that the United States desires to perpetuate itself as a nation, and that its statesmen will be mindful to conserve the federation.
I, therefore, answer the second question by saying that Root spoke the truth and that the United States cannot desire territorial conquest. It surely cannot wish to contract a mortal illness and pass on to death, like other empires which have sunk below the historical horizon.
In the United States the federal government is the centre of the system. The different states revolve, so to speak, around the American sun, each state retaining its independence, character and individual laws.