STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 33

We h ave a national government, but the
powers of that government are wisely restricted
to precise objects. It is less a supreme govern-
ment than a confederation. Can there be two
sovereign powers in the same land? The most
essential attributes of power still reposes in the
state governments. The state legislatures are the
primary assemblies of the people. To their
hands is entrusted general legislative author-
ity. They have in charge the lives , the hber-
ies, and the property of the people. The Terra-
Firma is considered the property of the state,
and from which the people are said to hold.

The radical distinction between the powers
of the general and those of the state govern-
ments, are, that the former is restricted from
the exercise of any powers, not expressly con-
ferred by the constitution.—The latter have the
lull exercise of all powers that are not forbidden
in their constitutions.

It has been shown that the congresses of the
revolution were simply assemblages of deputies
from the several independent states of the con-
federation. They had no constitution, no au-
thority but was derived from letters of instruc-
tion. In the states, reposed all political power.
Even the articles of confederation or agree-
ment, by which the first rudiments of federal
connection were defined, was not assented to by
the state of Maryland, until the year 1781, near
the close of the revolutionary war,