e States on the other, have been greatly
disturbed. Originally, the States were the powerful political entities,
and the central government a mere agent for certain specific purposes;
but, in the development of the Constitution, the nation has naturally
become of overshadowing importance, while the States have relatively
steadily diminished in power and prestige.

These inevitable tendencies in American politics are called
"centralization," and while for nearly a century a great political party
bitterly contested its steady progress, due to the centripetal
influences above indicated, yet the contest was long since abandoned as
a hopeless one, and the struggle to-day is rather to keep, so far as
possible, the inevitable tendency measurably in check.

Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to suggest that the dual system of
government is a failure. It still endures in providing a large measure
of authority to the States in their purely domestic concerns, and, in a
country that extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the
Lakes to the Gulf, whose northern border is not very far from the Arctic
Circle, and whose southern border is not many degrees from the Equator,
there are such differences in the habits, conventions, and ideals of the
people that without this dual form of government the Constitution would
long since have broken down. It is not too much to say that the success
with which the framers of the Constitution reconciled national supremacy
and efficiency with local self-government is one of the great
achievements in the history of mankind.

3.

_The third principle was the guaranty of individual liberty through
constitutional limitations._

This marked another great contribution of America to the science of
government. In all previous government building, the State was regarded
as a sovereign, which could grant to individuals or classes, out of its
plenary power, certain privileges or exemptions, which were called
"liberties." Thus the liberties which the barons wrung from King John at
Runnymede were virtually exemptions from the power of government. Our
fathers did not believe in the sovereignty of the State in the sense of
absolute power, nor did they believe in the sovereignty of the people in
that sense. The word "sovereignty" will not be found in the Constitution
or the Declaration of Independence. They believed that each individual,
as a responsible moral being, had certain "inalienable rig