Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/400

380 380 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. of that State in the new sovereign created by the Constitution, i. e., they made a partition of the sovereignty of the State between the State and the United States, and the 8th section of Art. i contains that partition. The mode of making it was by granting to the' new sovereign those branches of sovereignty which are enumerated in the respective subsections of Section 8. That section, therefore, so far as regards its main object and scope, can have no application to any territory beyond the limits of the several States, for no partition was to be made of the sovereignty over any such territory. A strong presumption, therefore, arises that no part of the section was intended to extend beyond the limits of the States, as it cannot be supposed that any incidental objects were in- tended to have a more extensive operation than the main object. What were the incidental objects of the section? One was to provide security that the United States, in exercising those branches of sovereignty which had been granted to it, should treat all the States alike; for, if no such security were provided, a majority of States might at any time combine to oppress a minority. Accordingly, subsection i having granted to Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises," it is added "but aU duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." So, also, subsection 4 grants to Congress the power to establish an "uniform" rule of naturaliza- tion, and "uniform" laws on the subject of bankruptcies "through- out the United States." Reasons have already been given for believing that the term "United States," in both these sub- sections, is used in its original sense; and we now find another argument, in favor of the same view, in the scope and object of Section 8. As it would be absurd to hold that the grant of power in these subsections had any reference to territories as distin- guished from States, since Congress has full legislative powers in the territories without any grant from the States, so it would be absurd to hold that the limitation of the power has a more exten- sive operation than the power itself. Moreover, if all other argu- ments fail, it is at least true that those subsections contain nothing whatever to overthrow the presumption in favor of their being limited in their operation to the States. There is a dictum by Chief Justice Marshall, in Loughborough v. Blake,^ which is opposed to the view insisted upon in this article.
 * 5 Wheat. 317.