Upon this rule of classification, the test of republicanism was to be found in the views entertained by members upon the question whether the State governments ought to be abolished. Mr. Martin, indeed, went further, and considered those only as _truly_ republican, who were in favor of a purely federal system, and opposed to any plan of popular representation. Now it is quite clear, that the abolition of the State governments, so far as that subject was considered at all, and in the sense in which it was at any time mentioned, did not necessarily lead to _monarchy_ as a conclusion. The reduction of the State governments to local corporations and to the position of subordinate agents of the central government, was considered by some as a necessary consequence of a national representative government. This arose from the circumstance that a union of federal and national representation had nowhere been witnessed, and had not therefore been considered. I have already suggested, in the text, that, if the framers of the Constitution had gone on to the adoption of a pure system of popular and proportional representation in all the branches of the government, they must inevitably have bestowed upon that government full legislative power over all subjects; otherwise, they would have left the States, possessed of the sovereign powers of a distinct political organization, to contend with the national government by adverse legislation. The subsequent expedient of a direct and equal representation of the States in one branch of the government has in reality, to a great degree, disarmed State jealousy and opposition, by giving to the States as political bodies an equal voice in the check established by the branch in which they are represented. So that to argue, that, because there were men who saw the necessity for making a purely national or proportionate system of popular representation consistent with the situation in which it would place the country, they were therefore in favor of a monarchical system, was to argue from premises to a conclusion in no way connected. Had such a plan been carried out, it could have been, and must have been, purely republican in all its details; and it would have been liable to the reproach of being _monarchical_ in no other sense than any system which did not yield the point of a full federal equality, for which Mr. Martin and his party contended.