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FEDERAL POWERS.
After having settled the limits within which the federal government was to act, the next point was to determine the powers which it was to exert.
LEGISLATIVE POWERS
Division of the legislative Body into two Branches.—Difference in the Manner of forming the two Houses.—The Principle of the Independence of the States predominates in the Formation of the Senate.—The Principle of the Sovereignty of the Nation in the Composition of the House of Representatives.—Singular Effects of the Fact that a Constitution acan only be Logical in the early Stages of Nation.
The plan which had been laid down beforehand for the constitution of the several states was followed, in many points, in the organization of the powers of the Union. The federal legislature of the Union was composed of a senate and a house of representatives. A spirit of conciliation prescribed the observance of distinct principles in the formation of each of these two assemblies. I have already shown that two contrary interests were opposed to each other in the establishment of the federal constitution. These two interests had given rise to two opinions. It was the wish of one party to convert the Union into a league of independent states, or a sort of congress, at which the representatives of the several peoples would meet to discuss certain points of their common interests. The other party desired to unite the inhabitants of the American colonies into one sole nation, and to establish a government, which should act as the sole representative of the nation, as far as the limited sphere of its authority would permit. The practical consequences of these two theories were exceedingly different.
The question was, whether a league was to be established instead of a national government; whether the majority of the states, instead of the majority of the inhabitants of the Union, was to give the law: for every state, the small as well as the great, then retained the character of an independent power, and entered the
