The new American States, themselves colonies in the old Greek sense, were subject only to a government which they helped administer on equal terms with the old States.

No State was subject to another, new or old.

All paid a common allegiance to a central power which was identical with none.
The absolute novelty of this feature, as the world then stood, fails to impress us now because we are so used to it.

But it was at that time without precedent; and though since then the idea has made rapid progress, there seems in most cases to have been very great difficulty in applying it in practice.

The Spanish-American states proved wholly unable to apply it at all.