Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
The superiority of influence in favor of the particular governments
would result partly from the diffusive construction of the national
government, but chiefly from the nature of the objects to which the
attention of the State administrations would be directed.
It is a known fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly
weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object. Upon
the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to
his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large,
the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards
their local governments than towards the government of the Union;
unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better
administration of the latter.
This strong propensity of the human heart would find powerful
auxiliaries in the objects of State regulation.
The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under
the superintendence of the local administrations, and which will form
so many rivulets of influence, running through every part of the
society, cannot be particularized, without involving a detail too
tedious and uninteresting to compensate for the instruction it might
afford.
There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the
State governments, which alone suffices to place the matter in a clear
and satisfactory light,—I mean the ordinary administration of criminal
and civil justice. This, of all others, is the most powerful, most
universal, and most attractive source of popular obedience and
attachment. It is that which, being the immediate and visible guardian
of life and property, having its benefits and its terrors in constant
activity before the public eye, regulating all those personal interests
and familiar concerns to which the sensibility of individuals is more
immediately awake, contributes, more than any other circumstance, to
impressing upon the minds of the people, affection, esteem, and
reverence towards the government. This great cement of society, which
will diffuse itself almost wholly through the channels of the
particular governments, independent of all other causes of influence,
would insure them so decided an empire over their respective citizens
as to render them at all times a complete counterpoise, and, not
unfrequently, dangerous rivals to the power of the Union.
The operations of the national government, on the other hand, falling
less immediately under the observation of the mass of the citizens, the
benefits derived from it will chiefly be perceived and attended to by
speculative men. Relating to more general interests, they will be less
apt to come home to the feelings of the people; and, in proportion,
less likely to inspire an habitual sense of obligation, and an active
sentiment of attachment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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