and exercising within itself a power of local legislation. Is it not evident that a degree of local information and preparatory labor would be found in the several volumes of their proceedings, which would very much shorten the labors of the General Legislature, and render a much smaller number of members sufficient for it?
The Fœderal councils will derive great advantage from another circumstance. The Representatives of each State will not only bring with them a considerable knowledge of its laws, and a local knowledge of their respective districts, but will probably in all cases have been members, and may even at the very time be members, of the State Legislature, where all the local information and interests of the State are assembled, and from whence they may easily be conveyed by a very few hands into the Legislature of the United States.
The observations made on the subject of taxation apply with greater force to the case of the militia. For however different the rules of discipline may be in different States, they are the same throughout each particular State; and depend on circumstances which can differ but little in different parts of the same State.
The attentive reader will discern that the reasoning here used, to prove the sufficiency of a moderate number of Representatives, does not in any respect contradict what was urged on another occasion with regard to the extensive information which the Representatives ought to possess, and the time that might be necessary for acquiring it. This information, so far as it may relate to local objects, is rendered necessary and difficult, not by a difference of laws and local circumstances within a single State, but of those among different States. Taking each State by itself, its laws are the same, and its interests but little diversified. A few men, therefore, will possess all the knowledge requisite for a proper representation of them. Were the interests and
