Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
Into the administration of these a greater number of individuals will
expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and
emoluments will flow. By the superintending care of these, all the more
domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and
provided for. With the affairs of these, the people will be more
familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the members of these, will
a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal
acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on
the side of these, therefore, the popular bias may well be expected
most strongly to incline. Experience speaks the same language in this
case. The federal administration, though hitherto very defective in
comparison with what may be hoped under a better system, had, during
the war, and particularly whilst the independent fund of paper
emissions was in credit, an activity and importance as great as it can
well have in any future circumstances whatever.
It was engaged, too, in a course of measures which had for their object
the protection of everything that was dear, and the acquisition of
everything that could be desirable to the people at large. It was,
nevertheless, invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the
early Congresses was over, that the attention and attachment of the
people were turned anew to their own particular governments; that the
federal council was at no time the idol of popular favor; and that
opposition to proposed enlargements of its powers and importance was
the side usually taken by the men who wished to build their political
consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens. If,
therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future
become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the
change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a
better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent
propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be
precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover
it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could
have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere
that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously
administered. The remaining points on which I propose to compare the
federal and State governments, are the disposition and the faculty they
may respectively possess, to resist and frustrate the measures of each
other. It has been already proved that the members of the federal will
be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the
latter will be on the former. It has appeared also, that the
prepossessions of the people, on whom both will depend, will be more on
the side of the State governments, than of the federal government. So
far as the disposition of each towards the other may be influenced by
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