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Basic Constitutional Concepts
people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape—that the solid happiness
of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a
different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting
that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is
the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of Government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this
object. Were the plan of the Convention adverse to the public happiness,
my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent
with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union. In like manner, as far as the sovereignty of the States cannot be reconciled to the happiness of the people, the voice of every good citizen must be, Let the former be sacrificed to the latter. How far the sacrifice is necessary has been
shown. How far the unsacrificed residue will be endangered is the question before us.
Several important considerations have been touched in the course of
these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of
the Federal Government will by degrees prove fatal to the State Governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that
the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of
the last than of the first scale.
We have seen in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members
to despoil the general Government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments. Although in most of these examples the system has been so dissimilar
from that under consideration as greatly to weaken any inference concerning the latter from the fate of the former, yet, as the States will retain
under the proposed Constitution a very extensive portion of active sovereignty, the inference ought not to be wholly disregarded. In the Archæn
league, it is probable that the federal head had a degree and species of
power, which gave it a considerable likeness to the government framed by
the Convention. The Lycian confederacy, as far as its principles and form
are transmitted, must have borne a still greater analogy to it. Yet history
does not inform us that either of them ever degenerated or tended to degenerate into one consolidated government. On the contrary, we know