Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/128

 eagerness to invest the federal government with every power which is necessary to realize their visions in a great and splendid nation. Hence they do not discriminate between the several classes of federal powers, but contend for all of them, with the same blind and devoted zeal. It is remarkable that, in the exercise of all those functions of the federal government which concern our foreign relations, scarcely a case can be supposed, requiring the aid of any implied or incidental power, as to which any serious doubt can arise. The powers of that government, as to all such matters, are so distinctly and plainly pointed out in the very letter of the Constitution, and they are so ample for all the purposes contemplated, that it is only necessary to understand them according to their plain meaning, and to exercise them according to their acknowledged extent. No auxiliaries are required; the government has only to go on in the execution of its trusts, with powers at once ample and unquestioned. It is only in matters which concern our domestic policy, that any serious *struggle for federal power has ever arisen, or is likely to arise. Here, that love of splendor and display, which deludes so large a portion of mankind, unites with that self-interest by which all mankind are swayed, in aggrandizing the federal government, and adding to its powers. He who thinks it better to belong to a splendid and showy government, than to a free and happy one, naturally seeks to surround all our institutions with a gaudy pageantry, which belongs only to aristocratic or monarchical systems. But the great struggle is for those various and extended powers, from the exercise of which avarice may expect its gratifications. Hence the desire for a profuse expenditure of public money, and hence the thousand schemes under the name of internal improvements, by means of which hungry contractors may plunder the public treasury, and wily speculators prey upon the less skilful and cunning. And hence, too, another sort of legislation, the most vicious of the whole, which, professing a fair and legitimate object of public good, looks, really, only to the promotion of private interests. It is thus that classes are united in supporting the powers of government, and an interest is created strong enough to carry all measures, and sustain all abuses.

Let it be borne in mind that, as to all these subjects of