Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/180

 themselves, and for themselves, in their character of sovereign and independent communities. It was this important change which (to use the language of the preamble of the constitution) "formed a more perfect union." It, in fact, perfected it. It could not be extended further, or be made more intimate. To have gone a step beyond, would have been to consolidate the States, and not the Union — and thereby to have destroyed the latter.

It involved another change, growing out of the division of the powers of government, between the United States and the separate States — requiring that those delegated to the former should be carefully enumerated and specified, in order to prevent collision between them and the powers reserved to the several States respectively. There was no necessity for such great caution under the confederacy, as its Congress could exercise little power, except through the States, and with their co-operation. Hence the care, circumspection and precision, with which the grants of powers are made in the one, and the comparatively loose, general, and more indefinite manner in which they are made in the other.

It involved another, intimately connected with the preceding, and of great importance. It entirely changed the relation which the separate governments of the States sustained to the body, which represented them in their confederated character, under the confederacy; for this was essentially different from that which they now sustain to the government of the United States, their present representative. The governments of the States