ut for the mutual
jealousies of its neighbors.]

In America the subjects of the Union are not States, but private
citizens: the national Government levies a tax, not upon the State of
Massachusetts, but upon each inhabitant of Massachusetts. All former
confederate governments presided over communities, but that of the Union
rules individuals; its force is not borrowed, but self-derived; and it
is served by its own civil and military officers, by its own army, and
its own courts of justice. It cannot be doubted that the spirit of the
nation, the passions of the multitude, and the provincial prejudices
of each State tend singularly to diminish the authority of a Federal
authority thus constituted, and to facilitate the means of resistance to
its mandates; but the comparative weakness of a restricted sovereignty
is an evil inherent in the Federal system. In America, each State
has fewer opportunities of resistance and fewer temptations to
non-compliance; nor can such a design be put in execution (if indeed it
be entertained) without an open violation of the laws of the Union,
a direct interruption of the ordinary course of justice, and a bold
declaration of revolt; in a word, without taking a decisive step which
men hesitate to adopt.

In all former confederations the privileges of the Union furnished more
elements of discord than of power, since they multiplied the claims
of the nation without augmenting the means of enforcing them: and in
accordance with this fact it may be remarked that the real weakness of
federal governments has almost always been in the exact ratio of their
nominal power. Such is not the case in the American Union, in which,
as in ordinary governments, the Federal Government has the means of
enforcing all it is empowered to demand.

The human understanding more easily invents new things than new words,
and we are thence constrained to employ a multitude of improper and
inadequate expressions. When several nations form a permanent league
and establish a supreme authority, which, although it has not the same
influence over the members of the community as a national government,
acts upon each of the Confederate States in a body, this Government,
which is so essentially different from all others, is denominated a
Federal one. Another form of society is afterwards discovered, in which
several peoples are fused into one and the same nation with regard to
certain common interests, although they remain di