Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/300

 260 republic, or decline from our federal dignity into insignificant and withered fragments of empire."

§ 282. It is not difficult to trace some of the more important causes, which led to so formidable an opposition, and made the constitution at that time a theme, not merely of panegyric, but of severe invective, as fraught with the most alarming dangers to public liberty, and at once unequal, unjust, and oppressive.

§ 283. Almost contemporaneously with the first proposition for a confederation, jealousies began to be entertained in respect to the nature and extent of the authority, which should be exercised by the national government. The large states would naturally feel, that in proportion as congress should exercise sovereign powers, their own local importance and sovereignty would be diminished injuriously to their general influence on other states from their strength, population, and character. On the other hand, by an opposite course of reasoning, the small states had arrived nearly at the same result. Their dread seems to have been, lest they should be swallowed up by the power of the large states in the general government, through common combinations of interest or ambition.

§ 284. There was, besides, a very prevalent opinion, that the interests of the several states were not the same; and there had been no sufficient experience during their colonial dependence and intercommunication to settle such a question by any general reasoning, or any practical results. During the period, therefore, in which the confederation was under discussion in congress, much excitement and much jealousy was exhibited on this subject. The original draft,