"I apprehend the true intention of the States in uniting is, to have a firm, national government, capable of effectually executing its acts, and dispensing its benefits and protection. In it alone can be vested those powers and prerogatives which more particularly distinguish a sovereign State. The members which compose the superintending government are to be considered merely as parts of a great whole, and only suffered to retain the powers necessary to the administration of their State systems. The idea which has been so long and falsely entertained of each being a sovereign State, must be given up; for it is absurd to suppose there can be more than one sovereignty within a government. The States should retain nothing more than that mere local legislation, which, as _districts_ of a general government, they can exercise more to the benefit of their particular inhabitants, than if it was vested in a Supreme Council; but in every foreign concern as well as in those internal regulations, which respecting the whole ought to be uniform and national, the States must not be suffered to interfere. No act of the Federal Government in pursuance of its constitutional powers ought by any means to be within the control of the State Legislatures; if it is, experience warrants me in asserting they will assuredly interfere and defeat its operation. "The next article proposes to invest a number of exclusive rights, delegated by the present confederation, with this alteration: that it is intended to give the unqualified power of raising troops, either in time of peace or war, in any manner the Union may direct. It does not confine them to raise troops by quotas on particular States, or to give them the right of appointing regimental officers, but enables Congress to raise troops as they shall think proper, and to appoint all the officers. It also contains a provision for empowering Congress to levy taxes upon the States, agreeable to the rule now in use, an enumeration of the white inhabitants, and three-fifths of other descriptions. "The 7th article invests the United States with the complete power of regulating the trade of the Union, and levying such imposts and duties upon the same, for the use of the United States, as shall in the opinion of Congress, be necessary and expedient.