Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/557

Rh tralization of power, and let it be remembered that every such successive step we have traced was taken in the interests of liberty, and for the benefit of the whole people. The Nation has acted in the defense of its citizens against the tyranny of States. We are not first citizens of Rhode Island, or South Carolina, but, if we belong to the Nation at all, we are first parts of that Nation. I am first a citizen of the United States, then a citizen of the State of New York, then a citizen of Onondaga county in that State, and then a citizen of the town of Manlius, and lastly, a citizen of the village of Fayetteville. That every person born or naturalized in the Nation, is first a citizen of the Nation, must be borne in mind, for upon that depend the liberties of every man, woman and child in the Nation, black or white, native or foreign. Although Rhode Island led in State rights, she had many followers, as only four States complied with the recommendation of Congress to invest that body with more powers for collecting the revenue and prosecuting the war. This non-compliance led to active debate. In regard to the public debt it was said, "That it must, once for all, be defined and established on the faith of the States, solemnly pledged to each other, and not revocable by any, without a breach of the general compact." If a feeling of insecurity existed in regard to the property interests of the Nation when but thirteen legislative bodies assumed their control, how much greater is the insecurity of our personal interests if they are, as is assumed, under the control of thirty-seven separate legislative bodies, and subject to their constant revision?

The controversy soon based itself upon the security of human rights. It was said that it "had ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature," that "the citizens of the United States were responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society," and that it was for "the people of the United States, by whose will and for whose benefit the Federal Government was instituted, to decide whether they would support their rank as a Nation." Virginia and New York ultimately led in the proceeding which caused the formation of the Constitution; New York, through her Legislature, declaring that the radical source of the government embarrassments lay in the want of sufficient power in Congress, and she suggested a convention for the purpose of establishing a firm National government. Out of this agitation grew the Constitution of the United States, which was the third great step in the centralization[Pg 527] of power. The pride and the boast of this country has been more fully centered, if possible, on the Constitution than on the Declaration, and yet the Constitution was not framed until eleven years after our existence as a Nation—not ratified by the whole of the original States until about fourteen years after we had taken rank as a free and independent people—Rhode Island being the last State to give her adherence—and it was expressly framed and adopted in order to centralize power, and to destroy the State rights doctrine.

Washington himself, in transmitting, as President of the Convention, the Constitution to Congress, said: "It is obviously impracticable in the Federal Government of these States to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all," and in the deliberations of the Convention upon the subject, they kept steadily in view that which appeared to them "the greatest of every true American—the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, safety, and, perhaps, our National existence." Thus we see not only the desire of the originators of the Constitution to strengthen the National power by that instrument, but we also have the views of Washington himself in regard to the necessity of consolidating power in the Nation.

The various amendments to the Constitution have been adopted with the intent of further defining and securing National power. The first ten, which were called the conciliatory amendments, were suggested in the conventions of a number of the States at the very time of adopting the Constitution. The first Congress which met thereafter proposed twelve amendments, of which ten were adopted in 1791, only two years after the full adoption of the Constitution. These ten amendments secured religious freedom, freedom of speech, the right of people to be secure in their houses, trials by jury, etc. All of them centralizing power in the National hands, and at the same time securing broader liberty to the people. These amendments were passed at the first session of the First Congress. An eleventh amendment was proposed by the Third National Congress in 1794, and declared ratified in 1798, thus making eleven amendments to the Constitution in the short space of seven years. In 1803 a twelfth amendment was proposed by the Eighth Congress, and ratified in 1804.

We pass now over quite a space of time, in which the National power and State power retained their relative positions to each other. Perhaps in no better place can I mention two constantly existing, yet diverse tendencies in the people of the United States, which are well-defined in the minds of but few persons. There are two kinds of centralized power, one dangerous to liberty, and the other fortifying and securing liberty. The dangerous is that which has grown to such dimensions in the various States, multiplying legislation and regulating each petty local concern within its borders, down to a village cemetery. This has led to that destruction of liberty—a multiplication of statutes which have scarcely been recorded ere a second legislative body has annulled them. Each State has, in fact, been an immense centralized power; and as bitter as has been the South against centralized National power, we have in it seen a most imperious, tyrannical exercise of centralized power under the specious name of State rights. The evil is such a constantly increasing one under the old constitutions, that they are being