To require us to love the men across the ocean as warmly as the fellow-citizens of our own commonwealth is a milder form of the absurdity, which should require us to love the children of all other men as tenderly as our own. The Spartan could not remain patriotic out of sight of the mountains of Laconia and Arcadia, the Switzer when he has forgotten his Alps. Now warm and generous patriotism is the prime element of a state's strength, progress, and glory. Here we have an argument in the very facts of philosophy for preferring a confederated over a consolidated body of states. It has been the small states, Israel, Tyre, Greece, Old Rome, Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Virginia, which have made their impress upon the world's history for good, and for free civilization.
Small states are the homes of efficient patriotism.
But, on the other hand, the world has grown too large to make it desirable to have its system of nations formed of a multitude of little, separate, rival commonwealths, each pursuing its own interests without any umpire between them. The result would be too constant strifes. Here then is a vast dilemma. The solution is found in the principle of Confederation. In such a happy federation the particular patriotism of the citizen for his own commonwealth must be first and warmest, even as the love of the most philanthropic parent for his own children and kinsmen must be nearer and warmer than the kindness which he feels for the children of others.