ple of the State of New York:

I FLATTER myself it has been clearly shown in my last number that the
particular States, under the proposed Constitution, would have COEQUAL
authority with the Union in the article of revenue, except as to duties
on imports. As this leaves open to the States far the greatest part of
the resources of the community, there can be no color for the assertion
that they would not possess means as abundant as could be desired for
the supply of their own wants, independent of all external control. That
the field is sufficiently wide will more fully appear when we come to
advert to the inconsiderable share of the public expenses for which it
will fall to the lot of the State governments to provide.

To argue upon abstract principles that this co-ordinate authority cannot
exist, is to set up supposition and theory against fact and reality.
However proper such reasonings might be to show that a thing OUGHT NOT
TO EXIST, they are wholly to be rejected when they are made use of
to prove that it does not exist contrary to the evidence of the fact
itself. It is well known that in the Roman republic the legislative
authority, in the last resort, resided for ages in two different
political bodies not as branches of the same legislature, but as
distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite
interest prevailed: in one the patrician; in the other, the plebian.
Many arguments might have been adduced to prove the unfitness of two
such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having power to ANNUL
or REPEAL the acts of the other. But a man would have been regarded as
frantic who should have attempted at Rome to disprove their existence.
It will be readily understood that I allude to the COMITIA CENTURIATA
and the COMITIA TRIBUTA. The former, in which the people voted by
centuries, was so arranged as to give a superiority to the patrician
interest; in the latter, in which numbers prevailed, the plebian
interest had an entire predominancy. And yet these two legislatures
coexisted for ages, and the Roman republic attained to the utmost height
of human greatness.

In the case particularly under consideration, there is no such
contradiction as appears in the example cited; there is no power on
either side to annul the acts of the other. And in practice there is
little reason to apprehend any inconvenience; because, in a short course
of time, the wants of the States will naturally reduce themsel