Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
Within every district to which a federal collector would be allotted,
there would not be less than thirty or forty, or even more, officers of
different descriptions, and many of them persons of character and
weight, whose influence would lie on the side of the State. The powers
delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are
few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are
numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on
external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce;
with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be
connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all
the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the
lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order,
improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal
government will be most extensive and important in times of war and
danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security.
As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the
latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over
the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers
may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be
those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the
governments of the particular States. If the new Constitution be
examined with accuracy and candor, it will be found that the change
which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to
the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS. The
regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to
be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are
entertained. The powers relating to war and peace, armies and fleets,
treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all
vested in the existing Congress by the articles of Confederation. The
proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only substitutes a
more effectual mode of administering them. The change relating to
taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present
Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite
supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the
future Congress will have to require them of individual citizens; and
the latter will be no more bound than the States themselves have been,
to pay the quotas respectively taxed on them. Had the States complied
punctually with the articles of Confederation, or could their
compliance have been enforced by as peaceable means as may be used with
success towards single persons, our past experience is very far from
countenancing an opinion, that the State governments would have lost
their constitutional powers, and have gradually undergone an entire
consolidation. To maintain that such an event would have ensued, would
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