Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/62

34 finance, negotiation and war are connected. Should wantonness, lust of domination, beget such a disposition, the sense of the people of the several States would control the indulgence of so extravagant an appetite." This redundant exposition of the doctrine that there can be no tribunal above the authority of the States and that in them reside the ultimate decision, has been made because there is such a painful misunderstanding of the relation the Federal government sustains to the States, and of the comparative authority, power and value of the Union and of the States.

The forebodings of those who dreaded an undue enlargement of the powers of the central government the increase of centripetal tendencies to the weakening of the centrifugal have been more than realized. Instead of a rivalry between the general government and the States, between the delegated and the reserved powers, the antagonism has proved unreal and fallacious, and the strong trend has been and is to centralization, justifying the prediction of Jefferson that &quot;when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venial and oppressive as the government from which we separated.&quot; By an irresistible tendency the stronger has absorbed the weaker and is concentrating in itself unlimited and uncontrollable power. This usurpation has been carried so far that nothing short of an absolute negative on the part of the States can protect against the encroachments of a growingly centralized government. For a few years and naturally, States were superior in dignity, and two citizens of South Carolina declined positions on the Supreme court, one the chief-justiceship. The enlargement of territory, the multiplication of States, the glory resulting from successful wars, the enormous prosperity caused by varied climate and products, free interstate commerce,