hey were unable to create or
to introduce the spirit and the sense which give it life. They were
involved in ceaseless embarrassments between the mechanism of their
double government; the sovereignty of the States and that of the Union
perpetually exceeded their respective privileges, and entered into
collision; and to the present day Mexico is alternately the victim of
anarchy and the slave of military despotism.

[Footnote s: See the Mexican Constitution of 1824.]

The second and the most fatal of all the defects I have alluded to,
and that which I believe to be inherent in the federal system, is the
relative weakness of the government of the Union. The principle upon
which all confederations rest is that of a divided sovereignty. The
legislator may render this partition less perceptible, he may even
conceal it for a time from the public eye, but he cannot prevent it from
existing, and a divided sovereignty must always be less powerful than an
entire supremacy. The reader has seen in the remarks I have made on
the Constitution of the United States that the Americans have displayed
singular ingenuity in combining the restriction of the power of
the Union within the narrow limits of a federal government with the
semblance and, to a certain extent, with the force of a national
government. By this means the legislators of the Union have succeeded
in diminishing, though not in counteracting the natural danger of
confederations.

It has been remarked that the American Government does not apply itself
to the States, but that it immediately transmits its injunctions to the
citizens, and compels them as isolated individuals to comply with its
demands. But if the Federal law were to clash with the interests and the
prejudices of a State, it might be feared that all the citizens of
that State would conceive themselves to be interested in the cause of a
single individual who should refuse to obey. If all the citizens of
the State were aggrieved at the same time and in the same manner by the
authority of the Union, the Federal Government would vainly attempt to
subdue them individually; they would instinctively unite in a common
defence, and they would derive a ready-prepared organization from the
share of sovereignty which the institution of their State allows them
to enjoy. Fiction would give way to reality, and an organized portion
of the territory might then contest the central authority. *t The same
observation holds good