This was the type of government for which Hamilton contended and which a majority of the delegates in the Federal Convention really favored. But the difficulty of securing the adoption of a Constitution framed on this plan made it impracticable. To merge the separate states in a general government possessing unlimited authority would place all local interests at the mercy of what the people regarded as virtually a foreign power. Practical considerations, then, required that the Constitution should in appearance at least conform to the _federal_ rather than to the _national_ type. Accordingly the powers of government were divided into two classes, one embracing only those of an admittedly general character, which were enumerated and delegated to the general government, while the rest were left in the possession of the states. In form and appearance the general government and the governments of the various states were coordinate and supplementary, each being supreme and sovereign within its respective sphere. By this arrangement any appearance of subordination on the part of the state governments was carefully avoided; and since the state retained sovereign authority within the sphere assigned to it by the Constitution, the protection of local interests was thereby guaranteed. This understanding of the Constitution seems to have been encouraged by those who desired its adoption and was undoubtedly the only interpretation which would have found favor with the people generally. Moreover, it was a perfectly natural and logical development of the theory of checks. If the President, Senate, House of Representatives and the Supreme Court were coordinate branches of the general government, and each therefore a check on the authority of the others, a like division of authority between the general government as a whole on the one hand, and the states on the other, must of necessity imply a defensive power in the state to prevent encroachment on the authority reserved to it. And since the government was _federal_ and not _national_, and since the state government was coordinate with and not subordinate to the general government, the conclusion was inevitable that the former was a check on the latter in exactly the same way that each branch of the general government was a check on the others.