253
troduce the spirit and the sense which give it life. They were involved in ceaseless embarrassments between the mechanism of their double Government; the sovereignty of the States and that of the Union perpetually exceeded their respective privileges, and entered into collision; and to the present day Mexico is alternately the victim of anarchy and the slave of military despotism.
The second and the most fatal of all the defects I have alluded to, and that which I believe to be inherent in the Federal system, is the relative weakness of the Government of the Union. The principle upon which all confederations rest is that of a divided sovereignty. The legislator may render this partition less perceptible, he may even conceal it for a time from the public eye, but he cannot prevent it from existing; and a divided sovereignty must always be less powerful than an entire supremacy. The reader has seen in the remarks I have made on the Constitution of the United States, that the Americans have displayed singular ingenuity in combining the restriction of the power of the Union within the narrow limits of a Federal Government, with the semblance, and, to a certain extent, with the force of a national Government. By this means the legislators of the Union have succeeded in diminishing, though not in counteracting, the natural danger of confederations.
It has been remarked that the American Government does not apply itself to the States, but that it
