the delegates in the Federal Convention really favored. But
the difficulty of securing the adoption of a Constitution framed on this
plan made it impracticable. To merge the separate states in a general
government possessing unlimited authority would place all local
interests at the mercy of what the people regarded as virtually a
foreign power. Practical considerations, then, required that the
Constitution should in appearance at least conform to the _federal_
rather than to the _national_ type. Accordingly the powers of government
were divided into two classes, one embracing only those of an admittedly
general character, which were enumerated and delegated to the general
government, while the rest were left in the possession of the states. In
form and appearance the general government and the governments of the
various states were coordinate and supplementary, each being supreme and
sovereign within its respective sphere. By this arrangement any
appearance of subordination on the part of the state governments was
carefully avoided; and since the state retained sovereign authority
within the sphere assigned to it by the Constitution, the protection of
local interests was thereby guaranteed. This understanding of the
Constitution seems to have been encouraged by those who desired its
adoption and was undoubtedly the only interpretation which would have
found favor with the people generally. Moreover, it was a perfectly
natural and logical development of the theory of checks. If the
President, Senate, House of Representatives and the Supreme Court were
coordinate branches of the general government, and each therefore a
check on the authority of the others, a like division of authority
between the general government as a whole on the one hand, and the
states on the other, must of necessity imply a defensive power in the
state to prevent encroachment on the authority reserved to it. And since
the government was _federal_ and not _national_, and since the state
government was coordinate with and not subordinate to the general
government, the conclusion was inevitable that the former was a check on
the latter in exactly the same way that each branch of the general
government was a check on the others.

This view of the Constitution while allowed to go unchallenged for the
time being to secure its adoption by the states, was not accepted,
however, by those who framed it. For although in outward appearance the
Constitution di