the cost of maintaining the national government has advanced by leaps and bounds. Where fifty years ago the appearance of an official bearing credentials from Washington was a rare event and occurred only in connection with the postal service, the customs service, or the collection of internal revenue from tobacco and alcoholic liquors, that appearance is now an every-day occurrence. It may relate either to some large public interest or to the most intimate details in the administration of a national bank, a railway, an industrial corporation, or to the food and drink and medicine of the humblest household. The Sixteenth, or Income Tax, Amendment to the constitution placed new and almost limitless sources of revenue at the disposal of the national government, and correspondingly narrowed the area within which the several states might equitably and judiciously levy taxes for the support of their own governmental activities. Moreover, the fact that the national income tax, as now levied, is largely paid by special classes of the population, relatively small in number, and by particular sections of the country, has led to constant and continuing pressure upon the Congress to make large appropriations for all sorts of purposes that formerly lay far outside the range of possible action by the national government. Some of these purposes are undoubtedly judicious and in the interest of the nation as a whole, but the transfer of so much revenue and authority from the

state governments to the national government has had and is having a tendency to consolidate and enlarge the power of the national government at the expense of the states, which, if persisted in, must one day transform the federal republic into an imperial democracy. Submerging the state governments in the national government is as grave an infraction of sound constitutional theory as were the doctrines of nullification and secession. The federal republic established by the constitution would have been torn apart had secession established itself as sound doctrine; similarly the federal republic established by the constitution will disappear if the states continue to surrender their governmental prerogatives and become merely historical names like the kingdoms of Saxon England or the ancient provinces of France. A hundred years ago to contend for states' rights meant to attack and to weaken the constitution; to-day to contend for states' rights means to defend and strengthen the constitution.

The political system of the United States of America is neither an imperial state, nor a parliamentary state, nor a class-government state; it is a federal republic having a government of limited and carefully defined powers. If the proper balance be preserved between those powers which are delegated to the national government and those powers which are retained for the state governments, the federal principle will be protected and its usefulness

will grow with time and political experience. Undue centralisation of authority, with the bureaucratic system of control which this always brings in its train, will be avoided, as will undue weakening of the central authority, which is the forerunner of disintegration and even of separation.

Since the people of the United States are the sovereign power behind both the national government and the state governments, and since they have reserved for themselves a large area of civil liberty from which national and state governments are both excluded, it is plain that the popular mind and the popular will may express themselves in more than one way. It is the people of the United States who speak through the national government when that government acts in respect of matters confided to it by the constitution. It is the people of the United States who speak through the several state governments when these act in respect of matters reserved to the states. It is likewise the people of the United States who speak through their own non-governmental activities in respect of all those matters which they have reserved to themselves. In the United States many interests, many characteristics, and many responsibilities are national without being governmental, and especially without being within the proper purview of the national government. This point, so essential to clear thinking in regard to the American people and their government, is

hard for those brought up under a different social and political system to understand. Indeed it is by no means always understood in the United States. Lord Bryce grasped this essential fact when he pointed out the reasons why in the United States public opinion is exalted above the regular legally appointed organs of government.1

That national consciousness which Benjamin Franklin strove so hard to create and which Washington and Hamilton and Marshall and Webster did so much to develop, never became both real and vital until after the Civil War. The pride of achievement in education and in industry, the economic interdependence of the various sections of the country, the stupendous growth of untaxed and untrammelled trade between the several states, and the psychological effect of the little war with Spain and of participation in the great war against the Central Empires, have united to develop a national consciousness which is now as abounding as it was once deficient. This national consciousness, so excellent and so splendid in itself, naturally operates to exaggerate the importance and functions of the national government over against those of the state and local governments, and in so far operates to destroy the very ground on which it rests.

To the old doctrines of constitutional interpreta

Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth, 2 vols. (New York, 1912), vol. II, p. 271.

tion is to be added a new and very attractive one of recent origin, namely, that the people of the United States being a sovereign power, their national government possesses all the authority needed to represent that sovereignty in respect to matters both internal and external, whether such authority be expressly conferred by the constitution or not. The United States Supreme Court in a striking opinion rendered in 1907 refused to accept this new doctrine of constitutional interpretation, and definitely stated that "the proposition that there are legislative powers affecting the nation as a whole which belong to, although not expressed in the grant of powers, is in direct conflict with the doctrine that this is a government of enumerated powers."1 Despite this authoritative decision, the doctrine of implied sovereignty has many defenders and advocates and is likely to make itself felt in the years to come.

For the last forty years the United States Supreme Court, following public opinion and pretty accurately reflecting it, has shown an increasing tendency to enlarge the scope of the powers of the national government by constitutional construction, as well as constantly to extend the authority of the national judiciary. Much of this has been due to the enormous growth of interstate commerce and the multiplication of questions arising therefrom. Since the control of interstate commerce is expressly confided

1 Kansas v. Colorado (1906), 206 U. S., 89.