CHAPTER IV.

THE UNITED STATES.

§39. THE next words in the enacting clause of the Constitution are "the United States." They are used twice in this short sentence, with the words "of America" superadded in the last instance. They are the corporate name of the nation, and the local name of the country. As Great Britain forms the name of the kingdom and that of its principal island, and Russia the name of the empire and of the country over which it extends; so the United States is the name of the body politic, the nation, and of the country it occupies, and over which its government extends. The same name is used in the Declaration of Independence, as it is in this part of the Constitution, without any intimation how or of what it is composed, or that it includes a series of subordinate States or any other subdivisions. The assertion is, that the United States, the nation, the people occupying and controlling this land wherein we dwell, do, in their aggregate and corporate character, enact

this fundamental law for the government of the United States; the nation, the country, ourselves and our successors, being the owners and occupants of this good land.

40. The emphatic idea is, that the Constitution was made for the nation, the whole nation, including all its parts; and not for the parts, combining them into a whole, for the people, collectively and individually, in all their capacities and relations, whether personal, political, social, corporate, or otherwise. It is the Constitution for the whole; the fundamental and supreme law of the land. Individuals, societies, and corporations-commercial, political, and localexist under it as they existed before it; but they are all subject to it, and dependent upon it for the protection of their natural rights and the foundation of their political rights. Though their political rights, in the form then legally approved, were, like their natural rights, anterior to the Constitution, yet, when that was adopted, it became paramount to, and the legal measure of, them all; and the local Constitutions and laws were to be construed and restricted by this supreme law. Any thing in any of them inconsistent with it was void. The present State constitutions were all made, or revised and reenacted, under it, and designed, or should have been, to conform to it; but at any rate must be judged by it, and cannot counteract it. "The idea of a national government involves in it not

only an authority over individual citizens, but an indefinite supremacy over all persons and things, so far as they are objects of lawful government." "In some instances the power of the new government will act on the States in their collective characters." Local governments are not only useful and most valuable as schools of republican institutions and otherwise, but they are absolutely indispensable, and must have been instituted by the government, if not already provided. The national government could not get along without them. Mr. Madison says, "If they were abolished, the general government would be compelled, by the principle of selfpreservation, to re-instate them in their proper jurisdiction; " or, he should have added, on the same principle of self-preservation, provide a substitute either of which would be justified and required by it. All controversies respecting the jurisdiction of such subordinate governments must be ultimately decided by a "tribunal ... to be established under the general government, . . . according to the rules of the Constitution," and acting under its laws.1

§ 41. It would have been impossible for any central government to manage all the minute interests of every petty locality in a great country. As such governments were necessary in some form, and as these were already formed, what could be more natural or desirable than

1 Madison. See Federalist, Nos. 14, 39, and 40.

to recognize and continue and guarantee the perpetual republican character of those organizations? Such constitutional recognition and consequent perpetuation of the existing divisions may have been hazardous, and liable to much doubt on the score of expediency; and accordingly we find that some of the most sagacious men in the convention were very desirous and sought diligently to avoid it: and our recent history has abundantly confirmed the sound wisdom and foresight which occasioned their fears and anxieties on the subject. It is still the most vulnerable part of our system; but its apprehended evils can best be guarded against by a liberal use of the actual powers and jurisdiction of the general government, attended, as it necessarily would be, by a corresponding diminution of the power and patronage, the expense and influence, of the subordinate local administrations. The Constitution gives them no power, and reserves none to them, and leaves nothing for their own people to give them, but such as the nation, "the people of the United States," have not delegated to their own government. The Constitution subjects the States politically (as bodies politic), and their officers officially (in their official capacity), as well as individuals personally, to divers important duties, which, of course, they are respectively authorized to perform; and the performance must be enforced, peaceably or forcibly, like all other lawful duties,

by the power which the nation has made responsible for the execution of all the laws.

$42. In a few instances it authorizes State action, with the consent, or subject to the ultimate control, of Congress; but of an independent right to govern in the last resort, which is supreme power, either local or general, the Constitution confers or recognizes none, in the State governments or anywhere else, except in the people and in the Constitution and laws of the United States, which are the only supreme law of the land. It really reserves nothing to them expressly of the power they before possessed, but the right to appoint the officers of the militia, and to train them according to the discipline adopted by Congress. No other power of final local administration was either given or continued, by express provision, to the States. The question in regard to State rights, which always mean State independence and State sovereignty, is between subordinate and co-ordinate governments, whether the States, being within and parts of the United States, hold their separate political existence and powers by virtue of the Constitution and in subordination to its provisions, and of course bound to conform to it and sustain it; or whether they hold by sovereign right, above or co-ordinate with and independent of the Constitution, and of course authorized to act against it. In strictness, nothing is "reserved," or could be