Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/296

276 upon self-government by imposing certain prohibitions upon the States, rather put self-government upon a broader basis. I openly confess, I never called that one of the requirements of true self-government that the States should have the power to transform it into an exclusive privilege. True State-rights should, in my opinion, consist in the power of a State to assert and protect the right of local self-government against unconstitutional encroachments on the part of the central authority, but by no means in the power of arbitrarily stripping a portion of its citizens of the rights, which, under the regime of true self-government, they should enjoy. With greater plausibility might it be said that the Constitutional amendments not only limit the rights of the States, but confer greater powers upon the Central Government, the exercise of which might tend to dangerous centralization. That by the clause giving Congress power to enforce the amendments by appropriate legislation the powers of the General Government have been enlarged, I will not question. How far I will not now discuss, nor do I consider it necessary; for it is my conviction that not in the rightful exercise of those powers, but in their abuse, lies the danger which threatens our free institutions, and where the abuse begins it will in each case not be difficult to determine if we construe the new amendments, in conjunction with the rest of the Constitution, in the light of the spirit which pervades the whole. In this respect the new amendments are by no means peculiar. There are many more powers enumerated in the Constitution whose rightful exercise is harmless and beneficent, but whose abuse is dangerous. We may oppose and neutralize the spirit which brings forth those arbitrary abuses of power, and succeeding in that we need not trouble ourselves about the authority conferred by any provision of the Constitution as it stands. Where you