Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/123

Rh writer alleged that the decision "involved more danger to the liberties of America than the claims of the British Parliament to tax us without our consent. . . . If you submit to the demand, you will authorize a sovereign jurisdiction to exercise a power which can never be exercised by it but to the destruction of your own power, to the overthrow of the State Governments, to the consolidation of the Union for the purpose of arbitrary power, to the downfall of Uberty and the subversion of the rights of the people ; for whenever all the important powers of government shall be centred in that of the United States, it will be without check or control." Others said that "if the sovereignty of the States is to be thus annihilated, there must be a consolidated Government and a standing army", and that the "craft and subtility of lawyers** had introduced this clause into the Constitution as "the plan of all aristocrats to reduce the States to corporations." Another stated that it "fritters States away to corporations." Another said that : " It must excite serious ideas in those who have from the beginning been inclined to suspect that the absorption of the State governments