number of circumstances which had a tendency to dissolve the Union. Almost every State that has ever felt itself aggrieved threatened to quit the Federation. Massachusetts has done so repeatedly. During the war of 1812 there occurred an angry contention with respect to the authority of the central government over the militia of the States. On one side it was affirmed that the government could call out the militia when it pleased; on the other it was insisted that the States alone possessed this right. The governor of Massachusetts was one of the many men in office who took the popular view, and maintained that the powers of the Federal government were limited by the Constitution, and that the State legislatures were "the guardians, not only of individuals, but of the sovereignty of their respective States." A representative in Congress from Massachusetts said that the Federal government could not claim any power by implication, but that the State governments might. The press and the pulpit of New England insisted energetically on their right of separation, and many years afterwards Mr. Webster, in the course of his celebrated discussion. with Hayne in the Senate, said "We, sir, who oppose the Carolina doctrine do not deny that the people may, if they choose, throw off any government when it becomes oppressive and intolerable, and erect a better in its stead." It is useless to multiply these illustrations. The doctrine that the States were left free to choose whether they would remain in the

CHAP. II. DOUBTFUL INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 23

Union or detach themselves from it, was never refuted, though it was occasionally contradicted, until the Southern States unwisely precipitated the decision in 1861.

It was not possible that a good understanding could be preserved between the Federal power and the governments of the States by a written Constitution. On the contrary, such a compact was likely to deepen old animosities, and inflame local jealousies. It was only by the studied employment in the Constitution of vague and disputable terms that the assent of the majority of the States was procured. The demands which could not be satisfied were evaded. The language in which the instrument was drawn up left each side free to suppose that it had gained the victory. The advocates of the central government, and the advocates of State rights, either considered that they had triumphed, or that all the questions between them were still left open. This intentional ambiguity was only cleared away by a civil war more angry and bloody, and entailing greater miseries upon the conquered, than any other recorded in history. If the Constitution had been what some believed, and all hoped it was, it would have prevented this contest. However difficult it might have been in 1787 to put sectional disagreements at rest, it would have cost the people less then to have attempted the task than it cost them in 1861, The leaves of the Sibyl had eventually to be purchased at a fearful price, and the secret written

upon them was found to be-" absolute submission to the majority, indissolubility of the Union." The "sovereignty" and "independence" of the States are henceforth hemmed in within positive limits by the sword and the bayonet. A State which enters the Union can never leave it again. The first parties to the contract might have pleaded that they misread it and were deceived, but those who accept it now do so with their eyes fully open to its obligations and the penalty of infringing them. Had it been so explicit at first there would have been no war of secession, because there would have been no Union. The States in 1787-89 would never have signed away their independent powers. They held certain principles which, so far from being odious, no one attempted to controvert. Less than eighty years afterwards the practical application of those same principles ruined eleven millions of people, annihilated their commerce, deprived them of all political or social rights, and laid their property and their persons at the mercy of their conquerors. The Constitution itself was the primary cause of these calamities. It did not expressly forbid secession; it did not expressly countenance it. It was quite possible for conscientious men, North and South, sincerely to believe they were in the right. The Constitution might be read in

was purposely framed so that it two ways. The North chose one reading, the South the other, and thus it befell that the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children, and the South

CHAP. II.

STATE RIGHTS.

25

bore the penalty which is exacted when one generation shifts its duties and responsibilities to another.

Under the influence of an organic national law which every side might interpret as it pleased, which might be held to mean one thing one week and a totally different thing the next, the whole character of the government has been changed. No one can now say with any certainty what will be even its chief features in ten years to come. The alluring ambition to become a great nation, respected if possible, but certainly feared, by the rest of the world, is displacing the early attachment to the independence of States. At first the Union was designed to be a Federation, with sufficient powers at the central point to preserve it from outer attack, and to secure a just performance of the obligations which had been entered into by the contracting States. The evils suffered under the old Confederation had proyed to the people the necessity of a strong government, and they wished to construct a government as strong as was consistent with the rights of States. There was nothing so dear to the people as the integrity of their local systems. The Federal government was intended to be an amplification of the State government. Each State has its Legislature, which is divided into two Houses, and there is an Executive at the head who, as often as the Legislature meets-generally once a year-prepares a message describing the condition and necessities of the community. The two Houses then proceed to adjust the

finances of the State, and pass such laws as are deemed expedient. In all these details a close parallel can be perceived in the Federal government. Could it be supposed that these two powers, the greater and the lesser, would constantly work side by side together in harmony?

The am

The conflict was indeed unavoidable. bition of the Federal Legislature was certain to increase, and it was left by the Constitution to run its course without restraint. The Executive was armed only with a qualified veto, which, when party passions ran high, might easily be rendered completely unavailing. The Judiciary could not interpose until it was too late to undo anything. It had no initiatory action, and if its decision gave offence it was doubtful whether it could save even itself for long together. We should depreciate the sagacity of the founders of the Constitution if we supposed that they were unconscious of these elements of discord. But they trusted to the future to discover safeguards and remedies which they did not dare to propose. They looked upon their work when it was finished with quite as much disquietude as admiration. "Hamilton, Washington, and others," says an American writer, "regarded democracy as a very doubtful experiment. They made the Constitution as conservative as they dared to make it, but they knew well it was a fragile bark, freighted with a precious cargo, and launched on the waves of a treacherous and tempestuous sea. They looked in