Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/530

 490 exclusive power to regulate the descents, devise, and distribution of estates, (a power the most formidable to despotism, and the most indispensable in its right exercise to republicanism,) will for ever give them an influence, which will be as commanding, as, with reference to the safety of the Union, they could deliberately desire.

§ 513. Indeed, the constant apprehension of some of the most sincere patriots, who by their wisdom have graced our country, has been of an opposite character. They have believed, that the states would, in the event, prove too formidable for the Union. That the tendency would be to anarchy in the members, and not to tyranny in the head. Whether their fears, in this respect, were not those of men, whose judgments were misled by extreme solicitude for the welfare of their country, or whether they but too well read the fate of our own in the history of other republics, time, the great expounder of such problems, can alone determine.