weakness
of its Government; and this weak Government was, notwithstanding, in
possession of rights even more extensive than those of the Federal
Government of the present day. But the more recent Constitution of
the United States contains certain principles which exercise a most
important influence, although they do not at once strike the observer.

This Constitution, which may at first sight be confounded with the
federal constitutions which preceded it, rests upon a novel theory,
which may be considered as a great invention in modern political
science. In all the confederations which had been formed before the
American Constitution of 1789 the allied States agreed to obey the
injunctions of a Federal Government; but they reserved to themselves the
right of ordaining and enforcing the execution of the laws of the Union.
The American States which combined in 1789 agreed that the Federal
Government should not only dictate the laws, but that it should execute
it own enactments. In both cases the right is the same, but the exercise
of the right is different; and this alteration produced the most
momentous consequences.

In all the confederations which had been formed before the American
Union the Federal Government demanded its supplies at the hands of the
separate Governments; and if the measure it prescribed was onerous to
any one of those bodies means were found to evade its claims: if the
State was powerful, it had recourse to arms; if it was weak, it connived
at the resistance which the law of the Union, its sovereign, met with,
and resorted to inaction under the plea of inability. Under these
circumstances one of the two alternatives has invariably occurred;
either the most preponderant of the allied peoples has assumed the
privileges of the Federal authority and ruled all the States in its
name, *p or the Federal Government has been abandoned by its natural
supporters, anarchy has arisen between the confederates, and the Union
has lost all powers of action. *q

[Footnote p: This was the case in Greece, when Philip undertook to
execute the decree of the Amphictyons; in the Low Countries, where the
province of Holland always gave the law; and, in our own time, in the
Germanic Confederation, in which Austria and Prussia assume a great
degree of influence over the whole country, in the name of the Diet.]

[Footnote q: Such has always been the situation of the Swiss
Confederation, which would have perished ages ago b