which it has once admitted as the foundation
of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement
of the States; and, in uniting together, they have not forfeited their
nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the
same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the
contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so; and
the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims
directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal
Government easily to conquer the resistance which may be offered to it
by any one of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of
them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as
has frequently been the case in the history of confederations.

If it be supposed that amongst the States which are united by the
federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal
advantages of union, or whose prosperity depends on the duration of that
union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support
the central Government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the
Government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but
from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in
order to derive equal advantages from their union; and in the case
just alluded to, the Federal Government would derive its power from the
unequal distribution of those benefits amongst the States.

If one of the confederate States have acquired a preponderance
sufficiently great to enable it to take exclusive possession of
the central authority, it will consider the other States as subject
provinces, and it will cause its own supremacy to be respected under the
borrowed name of the sovereignty of the Union. Great things may then
be done in the name of the Federal Government, but in reality that
Government will have ceased to exist. *b In both these cases, the power
which acts in the name of the confederation becomes stronger the more
it abandons the natural state and the acknowledged principles of
confederations.

[Footnote b: Thus the province of Holland in the republic of the Low
Countries, and the Emperor in the Germanic Confederation, have sometimes
put themselves in the place of the union, and have employed the federal
authority to their own advantage.]

In America the existing Union is advantageous to all the States, but it
is not in