Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/129

 concern, there is no absolute necessity that the federal government should possess any power at all. They are all such as the State governments are perfectly competent to manage; and the most competent, because each State is the best judge of what is useful or necessary to itself. There is, then, no room to complain of any want of power to do whatever the interests of the people require to be done. This is the topic upon which our author has lavishly expended his strength. Looking upon government as a machine contrived only for the public good, he thinks it strange that it should not be supposed to possess all the faculties calculated to answer the purposes of its creation. And surely it would be strange, if it were, indeed, so defectively constructed. But the author seems to forget that in our system the federal government stands not alone. That is but a part of the machine; complete in itself, certainly, and perfectly competent, without borrowing aid from any other source, to work out its own part of the general result. But it is not competent to work out the whole result. The State governments have also their part to perform, and the two together make the perfect work. Here, then, are all the powers which it is necessary that government should possess; not lodged in one place, but distributed; not the power of the State governments, nor of the federal government, but the aggregate of their several and *respective powers. In the exercise of those functions which the State governments are forbidden to exercise, the federal government need not look beyond the letter of its charter for any needful power; and in the exercise of any other function, there is still less necessity that it should do so; because, whatever power that government does not plainly possess, is plainly possessed by the State governments. I speak, of course, of such powers only as may be exercised either by the one or the other, and not of such as are denied to both. I mean only to say, that so far as the States and the people have entrusted power to government at all, they have done so in language plain and full enough to render all implication unnecessary. Let the federal government exercise only such power as plainly belongs to it, rejecting all such as is even doubtful, and it will be found that our system will work out all the useful ends of government, harmoniously and without contest, and without dispute, and without usurpation.