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inhabitants not involved in the Constitution of the United States are to be exclusively governed, it is equally true that they do not constitute the whole of the sovereign power which governs those relations of its inhabitants that are committed to the national legislature. The framers of the Constitution resorted to an enactment of that instrument by the people of the United States, and employed language which speaks in their name, for the express purpose, among other things, of bringing into action a national authority, on certain subjects. The organs of the general government, therefore, are not the agents of the separate will of the people of each State, for certain specified purposes, as its State government is the agent of their separate will for all other purposes; but they are the agents of the will of a collective people, of which the inhabitants of a State are only a part. That the will of the whole should not be defeated by the will of a part, was the purpose of the supremacy assigned to the Constitution of the United States; and that the rights and liberties of each part, not subject to the will of the whole, should not be invaded, was the purpose of the careful enumeration of the objects to which that supremacy was to extend.

In this supremacy of the national government within its proper sphere, and in the means which were devised for giving it practical efficiency, we are to look for the chief cause that has given to our system a capacity of great territorial extension. It is a system in which a few relations of the inhabitants

of distinct States are confided to the care of a central authority; while, for the purpose of securing the uniform operation of certain principles of justice and equality throughout the land, particular restraints are imposed on the power of the States. With these exceptions, the several States remain free to pursue such systems of legislation as in their own judgment will best promote the interest and welfare of their inhabitants. Such a division of the political powers of society admits of the union of far greater numbers of people and communities, than could be provided for by a single representative government, or by any other system than a vigorous despotism. Many of the wisest of the statesmen of that period, as we now know, entertained serious doubts whether the country embraced by the thirteen original States would not be too large for the successful operation of a republican government, having even so few objects committed to it as were proposed to be given to the Constitution of the United States. If those objects had been made to embrace all the relations of social life, it is extremely probable that the original limits of the Union would have far exceeded the capacities of a republican and representative government, even if the first difficulties arising from the differences of manners, institutions, and local laws could have been

overcome.

But these very differences may be, and in fact have been, made a means of vast territorial expansion, by the aid of a principle which has been placed at the

foundation of the American Union. Let a number of communities be united under a system which embraces the national relations of their inhabitants, and commits a limited number of the objects of legislation to the central organs of a national will, leaving their local and domestic concerns to separate and local authority, and the growth of such a nation may be limited only by its position on the surface of the earth. The ordinary obstacles arising from distance, and the physical features of the country, may be at once overcome for a large part of the purposes of government, by this division of its authority. The wants and interests of civilized life, modified into almost endless varieties, by climate, by geographical position, by national descent, by occupation, by hereditary customs, and by the accidental relations of different races, may in such a state of things be governed by legislation capable of exact adaptation to the facts with which it has to deal. In this way, separate States under the republican form may be multiplied indefinitely.

Now what is required in order to make such a multiplication of distinct States at the same time a national growth, is the operation of some principle that will preserve their national relations to the control of a central authority. This is effected by the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States, against which no separate State power can be exerted. This supremacy secures the republican form of government, the same general principles and maxims of justice, and the same limitations between

State and national authority, throughout all the particular communities; while, at the same time, it regulates by the same system of legislation, applied throughout the whole, the rights and duties of individuals that are committed to the national authority. It was for the want of this supremacy and of the means of enforcing it, that the Confederation, and all the other federal systems of free government known in history, had failed to create a powerful and effective nationality; and it is precisely this, which has enabled the Constitution of the United States to do for the nation what all other systems of free government had failed to accomplish.

In this connection, it seems proper to state the origin and purpose of that definition of treason which is found in the Constitution, and which was placed there in order, on the one hand, to defend the supremacy of the national government, and on the other, to guard the liberty of the citizen against the mischiefs of constructive definitions of that crime. No instructions had been given to the committee of detail on this subject. They, however, deemed it necessary to make some provision that would ascertain what should constitute treason against the United States. They resorted to the great English statute of the 25th Edward III.; and from it they selected two of the offences there defined as treason, which were alone applicable to the nature of the sovereignty of the United States. The statute, among a variety of other offences, denominates as treason the levying of war against the king in his

realm, and the adhering to the king's enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere. The levying of war against the government, and the adhering to the public enemy, giving him aid and comfort, were crimes to which the government of the United States would be as likely to be exposed as any other sovereignty; and these offences would tend directly to subvert the government itself. But to compass the death of the chief magistrate, to counterfeit the great seal or the coin, or tỏ kill a judge when in the exercise of his office, however necessary to be regarded as treason in England, were crimes which would have no necessary tendency to subvert the government of the United States, and which could therefore be left out of the definition of treason, to be punished according to the separate nature and effects of each of them. The committee accordingly provided that "treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against the United States, or any of them; and in adhering to the enemies of the United States, or any of them."2

But here, it will be perceived, two errors were committed. The first was, that the levying of war against a State was declared to be treason against the United States. This opened a very intricate question, and loaded the definition with embarrassment; for, however true it might be, in some cases, that an attack on the sovereignty of a State might

1 4 Blackstone's Com., Book IV. ch. 6.

VOL. II.

49

2 Art. VI. § 2 of the first draft of the Constitution.. Elliot, V. 379.

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