Occupying at that period nearly a middle rank between the largest and the smallest of the States with respect to population, New York had not yet grasped, or even perceived, the wonderful elements of her future imperial greatness. Her commerce was not inconsiderable; but it had hitherto been the disposition of those who ruled her counsels to retain its regulation in their own hands, and to subject it to no imposts in favor of the general interests of the Union. Most of her public men, also,[66] held it to be impracticable to establish a general government of sufficient energy to pervade every part of the United States, and to carry its appropriate benefits equally to all, without sacrificing the constitutional rights of the States to an extent that would ultimately prove to be dangerous to the liberties of their people. Their view of the subject was, that the uncontrolled powers and sovereignties of the States must be reserved; and that, consistently with the reservation of these, a mode might be devised of granting to the confederacy the moneys arising from a general system of revenue, some power of regulating commerce and enforcing the observance of treaties, and other necessary matters of less moment. This was the opinion of Yates, the Chief Justice of the State, who may be taken as a fair representative of the sentiments of a large part, if not of a majority, of its people at this time.[67] But neither he, nor any of those who concurred with him, succeeded in pointing out the mode in which the power to collect revenues, to regulate commerce, and to enforce the observance of treaties, could be conferred on the confederacy, without impairing the sovereignties of the States. It does not appear whether this class of statesmen contemplated a grant of full and unrestrained power over these subjects to a federal government, or whether they designed only a qualified grant, capable of being recalled or controlled by the parties to the confederacy, for reasons and upon occasions of which those parties were to judge. From the general course of their reasoning on the nature of a federal government, it might seem that the latter was their intention.[68] It is not difficult to understand how these gentlemen may have supposed that an irrevocable grant of powers to a general government might be dangerous to the liberties of the people of the States, because such a grant would involve a surrender of more or less of the original State sovereignties to a legislative body external to the State itself. But if they supposed that a grant of such powers could be made to a "federal" government, or a political league of the States, acting through a single body in the nature of a diet, and to be exercised when necessary by the combined military power of the whole, and yet be any less dangerous to liberty, it is difficult to appreciate their fears or to perceive the consistency of their plan. If the liberties