Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/528

 488 themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens. They must of course possess a large share of influence; and being independent of each other, will have many opportunities to interpose checks, as well as to combine a common resistance, to any undue exercise of power by the general government, independent of direct force.

§ 510. In the next place, the state governments are, by the very theory of the constitution, essential constituent parts of the general government. They can exist without the latter, but the latter cannot exist without them. Without the intervention of the state legislatures, the president of the United States cannot be elected at all; and the senate is exclusively and absolutely under the choice of the state legislatures. The representatives are chosen by the people of the states. So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation. How is it possible, under such circumstances, that the national government can be dangerous to the liberties of the people, unless the states, and the people of the states, conspire together for their overthrow? If there should be such a conspiracy, is not this more justly to be deemed an act of the states through their own agents, and by their own choice, rather than a corrupt usurpation by the general government?