ained limitations upon the power of every
public officer that the workings of free institutions can be continued.

The rigid limitation of official power is necessary not only to prevent the
deprivation of substantial rights by acts of oppression, but to maintain
that equality of political condition which is so important for the
independence of individual character among the people of the country. When
an officer has authority over us only to enforce certain specific laws at
particular times and places, and has no authority regarding anything else,
we pay deference to the law which he represents, but the personal relation
is one of equality. Give to that officer, however, unlimited power, or
power which we do not know to be limited, and the relation at once becomes
that of an inferior to a superior. The inevitable result of such a relation
long continued is to deprive the people of the country of the individual
habit of independence. This may be observed in many of the countries of
Continental Europe, where official persons are treated with the kind of
deference, and exercise the kind of authority, which are appropriate only
to the relations between superior and inferior.

So the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, after limiting the powers of
each department to its own field, declares that this is done "to the end it
may be a government of laws and not of men."

The third class of limitations I have mentioned are those made necessary by
the novel system which I have described as superimposing upon a federation
of state governments, a national government acting directly upon the
individual citizens of the states. This expedient was wholly unknown before
the adoption of our constitution. All the confederations which had been
attempted before that time were simply leagues of states, and whatever
central authority there was derived its authority from and had its
relations with the states as separate bodies politic. This was so of the
old confederation. Each citizen owed his allegiance to his own state
and each state had its obligations to the confederation. Under our
constitutional system in every part of the territory of every state
there are two sovereigns, and every citizen owes allegiance to both
sovereigns--to his state and to his nation. In regard to some matters,
which may generally be described as local, the state is supreme. In regard
to other matters, which may generally be described as national, the nation
is s