SCIENCE AND POLITICS. 167

Kut with the lapse of time and the growth of the rail-
way system, the tendency to di^^solution tends more and
more to a vanishing-point. Never were the United
States more united than they are to-day. It is not
long since tliey eelehrated the centenary of the inaugu-
ration of their first President, and so much enthusiasm
was shown in all parts of the great republic that it
may now be said with some confidence tliat it has an
assured and well-consolidated unity. This beneficent
result must surely be ascribed in a large degree to the
railways and the telegraphs. The various states have
been brought so near together that their interests are
more bound in unison, and are more nearly identical.
They are becoming more and more necessary to one
another's welfare, and the closer they unite the more
advantageous the union becomes. It is the avowed
object of the new Tariif Act to make tiie United States
one great neighbourhood, self-sufficing and indepen-
dent of foreign imports. Bret Harte, in one of his
poems, relates what two locomotive engines are fanci-
fully supposed to have said on meeting face to face at
the opening of the Union Pacific Railway, after travel-
ling from the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards respec-
ti\ely. But though they are made to boast of much,
yet they pass over in silence the greatest boast of all.
They might have boasted bow they were rendering
the Federal Constitution more and more stable. They
might have boasted on the fact that they were cement-
ing the union in indissoluble bonds, relegating the
horrors of civil war to a dark and nearly forgotten
limbo, and assuring in the future a lengthened pros-



168 ESSAYS IN POLITICS.
