be dependent on the action of the States. "To make it impossible for a State or group of States to jeopard by inaction or hostile action the existence of the central government," was a prime object with the men of 1787, and has greatly contributed to the solidity of the fabric they reared. The de facto secession of eleven States in 1860-61 interfered with the regular legal conduct neither of the presidential election of 1864 nor of the congressional elections from 1861 to 1865. Those States were not represented in Congress; but Congress itself went on diminished in numbers yet with its full legal powers, as the British Parliament would go on though all the peers and representatives from Scotland might be absent.
IX. A State is, within its proper sphere, just as legally supreme, just as well entitled to give effect to its own will, as is the National government within its sphere; and for the same reason. All authority flows from the people. The people have given part of their supreme authority to the National, part to the State governments. Both hold by the same title, and therefore the National government, although superior wherever there is a concurrence of powers, has no more right to trespass upon the domain of a State than a State has upon the domain of Federal action. That the course which a State is following is pernicious, that its motives are bad and its sentiments disloyal to the Union, makes no difference until or unless it infringes on the sphere of Federal authority. It may be thought that however distinctly this may have been laid down as a matter of theory, in practice the State will not obtain the same justice as the National government, because the court which decides points of law in dispute between the two is in the last resort a Federal court, and therefore biassed in favour of the Federal government. In fact, however, little or no unfairness has arisen from this cause.[1] The Supreme court may, as happened for twenty years before the War of Secession, be chiefly composed of States' Rights men. In any case
- ↑ "Whatever fluctuations may be seen in the history of public opinion during the period of our national existence, we think it will be found that the Supreme court, so far as its functions required, has always held with a steady and even hand the balance between State and Federal power, and we trust that such may continue to be the history of its relation to that subject so long as it shall have duties to perform which demand of it a construction of the Constitution,"—Judgment of the Supreme court in The Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 82.
