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detaching the creditor class from dependence upon the governments of the various states and allying them to the general government. The protective tariff system also had far-reaching political significance. It was expected to develop an influential manufacturing class who would look to the general government as the source of their prosperity, and who would therefore support its authority as against that of the states. To unite the moneyed interests and identify them with the general government was one of the reasons for chartering the bank of the United States. The internal revenue system which enabled the general government to place its officials in every community and make its authority directly felt throughout all the states was a political as well as a financial measure. It was prompted partly by the desire to appropriate this field of taxation before it was laid hold of by the states and partly by the desire to accustom the people to the exercise of Federal authority. All these measures which were formulated by Hamilton and carried through largely by his influence were intended to lay a solid basis for the development of national as opposed to state authority.

It was the purpose of the Constitution as we have seen to establish the supremacy of the socalled upper class. To consolidate its various elements and bring the government under their control was the aim of the Federalist party.

That such a policy should have aroused much popular opposition and provoked bitter criticism was to be expected. Criticism, however, was especially irritating to those who accepted the Federalist theory of government. For if the few had a right to rule the many, then the latter, as a matter of course, ought to treat the former with respect; since otherwise the power and influence of the minority might be overthrown.

The Alien and Sedition laws by which the governing class sought to repress criticism were the logical culmination of this movement to limit the power of the majority. This attempt, however, to muzzle the press and overthrow the right of free speech instead of silencing the opposition only strengthened and intensified it. It merely augmented the rising tide of popular disapproval which was soon to overwhelm the Federalist party.

The Constitution, as we have seen, did not expressly subordinate the states. Although framed by those who wished to make the general government supreme, it contained no provision which I could not be so construed as to harmonize with the widely accepted doctrine of state rights. It was represented by its framers and understood by the people generally as dividing sovereignty between the general government on the one hand and the states on the other. Within the province assigned to the state, it was to be supreme, which would naturally seem to imply adequate constitu

tional power in the state to defend itself against federal aggression. This view of the Constitution, if not actually encouraged, was allowed to go unchallenged in order not to endanger its adoption.

The Constitution is and was intended to be rigid only in the sense that it effectually limits the power of the majority. The founders of our government were not averse to such changes in the system which they established as would promote or at least not interfere with their main purposethe protection of the minority against the majority. Indeed, they intended that the Constitution as framed should be modified, amended and gradually molded by judicial interpretation into the form which they desired to give it, but which the necessity of minimizing popular opposition prevented them from accomplishing at the outset. Amendment by judicial interpretation was merely a means of conferring indirectly on the minority a power which the Constitution expressly denied to the majority. No hint of this method of minority amendment, however, was contained in the Constitution itself. But, on the contrary, any such view of the Constitution would have been negatived by the general theory of checks and balances which, consistently applied, would limit the power of the minority as well as that of the majority. It was not reasonable to suppose that the Constitution contemplated placing in the hands

of the minority a power which it was so careful to withold from the majority. In fact, the language of the Constitution warranted the belief that it was intended as a means of checking the general government itself by protecting the states in the exercise of all those powers not expressly denied to them. And since the Constitution, as we have seen, merely marked off the limits of federal and state jurisdiction, without specifying how the general government on the one hand, or the state government on the other, was to be kept within the territory assigned to it, it was natural to suppose that it contemplated giving to each the same means of protecting itself against the encroachments of the other.

Accordingly, when Congress appeared to overstep the limits which the Constitution set to its authority, the states naturally looked for some means of making the checks imposed upon the general government effective. True, the Constitution itself did not specify how this was to be done; but neither could one find in it any provision for enforcing the limitations on the authority of the states. The general government, however, had supplied itself with the means of self-protection by calling into existence the veto power of the Federal judiciary. This made the checks upon the authority of the states operative. But how were those imposed by the Constitution on the general government itself to be enforced?

Not by the Federal government or any of its organs, since this would allow it to interpret the Constitution to suit itself. If the general government should have the right to interpret and enforce the constitutional limitations on the powers of the states, it would for a like reason follow that the states should interpret and enforce the constitutional limitations on the authority of the general government itself. To carry out in good faith what appeared to be the purpose of the Constitution, i. e., to limit the authority of the general government as well as that of the states, it would seem to be necessary to make each the judge of the other's powers. It would devolve then on the state governments to keep the general government within the bounds which the Constitution set to its authority.

This could be accomplished, however, in no other way than by a veto on such acts of the general government as, in the opinion of the state, exceeded its constitutional authority. Those who believed in a federal as opposed to a national government and who therefore wished to enforce the constitutional checks on the general government, were irresistibly impellel toward the doctrine of nullification as the sole means of protecting the rights of the states.

As Von Holst says, "Calhoun and his disciples were not the authors of the doctrine of nullification and secession. That question is as old as the

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