As cause and consequence of oppressive taxes, and wasteful and corrupt extravagance, I may instance the centripetal tendencies of the Federal Government. The patriot must deprecate the rapid strides toward consolidation. Our government was designed as a government of clearly-defined limitations upon power. It is now practically absolute. In its complex character, a division of powers mutually exclusive betwixt Federal and State governments, "divisibility of sovereignty," as some phrase it, was contemplated. Now the States are provinces dependent on, submissive to, the central head, just as the Colonies were looked upon, prior to our independence, as a species of feudatories for the benefit of the mother country. By popular vote, by elastic constructions or palpable violations of the Constitution, by unprecedented assumptions, our Federal system has been revolutionized. It is the height of absurdity to talk of the restrictions of a written Constitution, when a dominant majority interprets finally that instrument, and there are no remedies to protect against invasion or encroachment.[8] It is a mere glittering generality to boast of a constitutional republic, if a President can violate the organic law with impunity, or if Congress is restrained in its assumptions only by its own sense of justice. Much recent executive, legislative, and judicial action has tended to absorb State rights and prerogatives. Mr. Boutwell's proposition to remand a State to territorial pupilage would be but the legal enactment and the logical sequence of what has had the enthusiastic approval of a large number of citizens. Encroachments have been so numerous and violent, submission has been so tame, that governors are coolly set aside on the demand of a petty marshal, and legislatures on the bidding of Mr. Jones. Once States were supposed to have the right of eminent domain; to have exclusive control of education, of litigation among its own citizens; to determine the elective franchise; to regulate the relations of parent and child, husband and wife, guardian and ward; but that was in the purer days of the republic, when States were not mere counties, but political communities, with, a large residuum of undelegated powers. The earlier amendments to the Constitution imposed checks and limitations upon the general Government, because of the watchful jealousy on the part of the States of their sovereignty and independence. Following the tendency to centralize, to despotize, the late amendments are in the direction of consolidation, and take away from the States what was once universally regarded as their _exclusive_ prerogative in reference to the elective franchise. Now, under amendments and "_appropriate_ legislation for carrying them into effect," the _national_ Government can control voting, make a registration of voters, and very soon, if there be no arrest of tyranny, the ballot box will be under the guardianship of Presidential appointees.