tion into the new territories and opening them up to settlement. But the steamboat could not quite bridge over the gap between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Internal improvements, canals, and improved roads were not quite the instrument that was needed. It was found at last in the introduction of the railway into the United States in 1830-32. This proved to be an agent which could solve every difficulty except its own. It could bridge over every gap; it could make profit of its own, and make profitable that which had before been unprofitable. It placed immigrants where the steamboat, canal, and road could at last be of the highest utility to them; it developed the great West with startling rapidity; it incrcased the sale of government lands so rapidly that in a few years the debt of the United States was paid off, and the surplus became, for the first time, a source of political embarrassment. In a few years further, aided by revolutionary troubles in Europe, immigration became a great stream, which poured into and altered the con

ditions of every part of the North and West. The stream was altogether nationalizing in its nature. The immigrant came to the United States, not to a particular State. To him, the country was greater than any State; even that of his adoption. Labor conditions excluded the South from this element of progress also. Not only were the railroads of the South hampered in every point by the old difficulty of slave labor; immigration and free labor shunned slave soil as if the plague were there prevalent. Year after year the North and West became more national in their prejudices and modes of thought and action; while the South remained little changed, except by a natural reactionary drift toward a more extreme colonialism. The natural result, in the next period was the development of a quasi nationality in the South itself.

The introduction of the railway had brought its own difficulties, though these were not felt severely until after years. In the continent of Europe, the governments carefully retained

their powers of eminent domain when the new system was introduced. The necessary land was loaned to the railways for a term of years, at the expiration of which the railway was to revert to the State; and railway troubles were non-existent, or comparatively tractable. In the United States, as in Great Britain, free right of incorporation was supplemented by what was really a gift of the power of eminent domain. The necessary land became the property of the corporations in fee, and it has been found almost equally difficult to revoke the gift or to introduce a railway control.

Democracy took a new and extreme line of development under its alliance with nationality. As the dominant party, about 1827-8, became divided into two parties, the new parties felt the democratic influence as neither of their predecessors had felt it. Nominations, which had been made by cliques of legislators or Con-` gressmen, began to be made by popular delegate conventions about 1825. Before 1835, national, State, and local conventions had been

united into parties of the modern type. With them came the pseudo democratic idea of "ro tation in office," introduced into national poli tics by President Jackson, in 1829, and adopted by succeeding administrations. There were also some attempts to do away with the electoral system, and to make the federal judiciary elective, or to impose on it some other term of office than good behavior; but these had neither success nor encouragement.

The financial errors of the war of 1812 had fairly compelled the re-establishment of the Bank of the United States in 1816, with a charter for twenty years, and the control of the deposits of national revenue. Soon after Jackson's inauguration, the managers of the new democratic party came into collision with the bank on the appointment of a subordinate agent. It very soon became evident that the bank could not exist in the new political atmos phere. It was driven into politics; a new charter was vetoed in 1832; and after one of the

bitterest struggles of our history, the bank ceased to exist as a government institution in 1836. The reason for its fall, however disguised by attendant circumstances, was really its lack of harmony with the national-democratic environment which had overtaken it. Benton's speech presents a review of this bank struggle and of accompanying political controversies.

The anti-slavery agitation, which began in 1830, was as evidently a product of the new phase of democracy, but will fall more naturally under the next period.

Webster's reply to Hayne has been taken as the best illustration of that thoroughly national feeling which was impossible before the war of 1812, and increasingly more common after it. It has been necessary to preface it with Hayne's speech, in order to have a clear understanding of parts of Webster's; but it has not been possible to omit Calhoun's speech, as a defence of his scheme of nullification, and as an exemplifica