We were the inhabitants of colonies distinct in
local government one from the other before the Revolution. By that
Revolution the colonies each became an independent State. They achieved
that independence and secured its recognition by the agency of a
consulting body, which, from being an assembly of the ministers of
distinct sovereignties instructed to agree to no form of government
which did not leave the domestic concerns of each State to itself, was
appropriately denominated a Congress. When, having tried the experiment
of the Confederation, they resolved to change that for the present
Federal Union, and thus to confer on the Federal Government more ample
authority, they scrupulously measured such of the functions of their
cherished sovereignty as they chose to delegate to the General
Government. With this aim and to this end the fathers of the Republic
framed the Constitution, in and by which the independent and sovereign
States united themselves for certain specified objects and purposes, and
for those only, leaving all powers not therein set forth as conferred on
one or another of the three great departments--the legislative, the
executive, and the judicial--indubitably with the States. And when the
people of the several States had in their State conventions, and thus
alone, given effect and force to the Constitution, not content that any
doubt should in future arise as to the scope and character of this act,
they ingrafted thereon the explicit declaration that "the powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by
it to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the
people." Can it be controverted that the great mass of the business
of Government--that involved in the social relations, the internal
arrangements of the body politic, the mental and moral culture of men,
the development of local resources of wealth, the punishment of crimes
in general, the preservation of order, the relief of the needy or
otherwise unfortunate members of society--did in practice remain with
the States; that none of these objects of local concern are by the
Constitution expressly or impliedly prohibited to the States, and that
none of them are by any express language of the Constitution transferred
to the United States? Can it be claimed that any of these functions
of local administration and legislation are vested in the Federal
Government by any implication? I have never found anything in