In all the confederations which have been formed before the American Union, the federal government demanded its supplies at the hands of the separate governments; and if the measure it prescribed was onerous to any one of those bodies, means were found to evade its claims: if the state was powerful, it had recourse to arms; if it was weak, it connived at the resistance which the law of the Union, its sovereign, met with, and resorted to inaction under the plea of inability. Under these circumstances one of two alternatives has invariably occurred: either the most preponderant of the allied peoples has assumed the privileges of the federal authority, and ruled all the other states in its name,[154] or the federal government has been abandoned by its natural supporters, anarchy has arisen between the confederates, and the Union has lost all power of action.[155] In America the subjects of the Union are not states, but private citizens: the national government levies a tax, not upon the state of Massachusetts, but upon each inhabitant of Massachusetts. All former confederate governments presided over communities, but that of the Union rules individuals; its force is not borrowed, but self-derived; and it is served by its own civil and military officers, by its own army, and its own courts of justice. It cannot be doubted that the spirit of the nation, the passions of the multitude, and the provincial prejudices of each state, tend singularly to diminish the authority of a federal authority thus constituted, and to facilitate the means of resistance to its mandates; but the comparative weakness of a restricted sovereignty is an evil inherent in the federal system. In America, each state has fewer opportunities of resistance, and fewer temptations to non-compliance; nor can such a design be put in execution (if indeed it be entertained), without an open violation of the laws of the Union, a direct interruption of the ordinary course of justice, and a bold declaration of revolt; in a word, without a decisive step, which men hesitate to adopt. In all former confederations, the privileges of the Union furnished more elements of discord than of power, since they multiplied the claims of the nation without augmenting the means of enforcing them: and in accordance with this fact it may be remarked, that the real weakness of federal governments has almost always been in the exact ratio of their nominal power. Such is not the case with the American Union, in which, as in ordinary governments, the federal government has the means of enforcing all it is empowered to demand.