, not only
of those affairs which more peculiarly belong to their province, but of
all, or of a part of the mixed affairs to which allusion has been made.
For the confederate nations which were independent sovereign States
before their union, and which still represent a very considerable share
of the sovereign power, have only consented to cede to the general
Government the exercise of those rights which are indispensable to the
Union.

When the national Government, independently of the prerogatives inherent
in its nature, is invested with the right of regulating the affairs
which relate partly to the general and partly to the local interests,
it possesses a preponderating influence. Not only are its own rights
extensive, but all the rights which it does not possess exist by its
sufferance, and it may be apprehended that the provincial governments
may be deprived of their natural and necessary prerogatives by its
influence.

When, on the other hand, the provincial governments are invested
with the power of regulating those same affairs of mixed interest, an
opposite tendency prevails in society. The preponderating force resides
in the province, not in the nation; and it may be apprehended that the
national Government may in the end be stripped of the privileges which
are necessary to its existence.

Independent nations have therefore a natural tendency to centralization,
and confederations to dismemberment.

It now only remains for us to apply these general principles to the
American Union. The several States were necessarily possessed of the
right of regulating all exclusively provincial affairs. Moreover these
same States retained the rights of determining the civil and political
competency of the citizens, or regulating the reciprocal relations of
the members of the community, and of dispensing justice; rights which
are of a general nature, but which do not necessarily appertain to the
national Government. We have shown that the Government of the Union is
invested with the power of acting in the name of the whole nation in
those cases in which the nation has to appear as a single and undivided
power; as, for instance, in foreign relations, and in offering a common
resistance to a common enemy; in short, in conducting those affairs
which I have styled exclusively national.

In this division of the rights of sovereignty, the share of the Union
seems at first sight to be more considerable than that of the States;