already cited. After stating the great extent of powers, which it was deemed necessary to delegate to the United States — or as they expressed it — "the general government of the Union" — the paragraph concludes in the following words: "But the impropriety of delegating such extensive trusts to one body of men (the Congress of the confederacy) is evident; and hence results the necessity of a different organization." This "different organization," consisted in substituting a government in place of the Congress of the confederation; and was, in fact, the great and essential change made by the convention. All others were, relatively, of little importance — consisting rather in the modification of its language, and the mode of executing its powers, made necessary by it — than in the powers themselves. The restrictions and limitations imposed on the powers delegated, and on the several States, are much the same in both. The change, though the only essential one, was, of itself, important, viewed in relation to the structure of the system; but it was much more so, when considered in its consequences as necessarily implying and involving others of great magnitude; as I shall next proceed to show.
It involved, in the first place, an important change in the source whence it became necessary to derive the delegated powers, and the authority by which the instrument delegating them should be ratified. Those of the confederacy were derived from the governments of the several States. They delegated them, and ratified the instrument by which
