The logic of its position makes it the aggressor, just as the logic of its opponents' position ties them to a negative and protesting or merely insubordinate part.

If the latter should prevail, their victory would become tantamount to national dissolution, either by putrefaction, by revolution, or by both.
Under the influence of certain practical demands, an increase has already taken place in the activity of the Federal government.

The increase has not gone as far as governmental efficiency demands, but it has gone far enough to provoke outbursts of protest and anguish from the "old-fashioned Democrats." They profess to see the approaching extinction of the American democracy in what they call the drift towards centralization.

Such calamitous predictions are natural, but they are none the less absurd.

The drift of American politics--its instinctive and unguided movement--is almost wholly along the habitual road; and any effective increase of Federal centralization can be imposed only by most strenuous efforts, by one of the biggest sticks which has ever been flourished in American politics.