654. Amendments Proposed but not Ratified. Of these there are four. The three first have been quoted on preceding pages. The last one, sometimes called from its author, Hon. S. A. Douglas, "the Douglas Amendment," proposed in 1861, was in these words: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." PART III. THE STATE GOVERNMENTS. CHAPTER XLIX. RELATIONS OF THE STATES TO THE UNION. REFERENCES. Some references bearing on the present division of the book have been given in Part II. Attention may again be drawn to Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, which is the great authority on State Constitutional Law. For the rest, it seems better to give references in connection with the several chapters when references are called for. 655. National Constitution Half a Political System.—Our examination of the Federal Government shows very clearly that it is but half a political system. No state could exist a day with such an imperfect government as this. The explanation of what might strike a foreigner as a strange anomaly is, that the important powers that the Constitution omits had already been intrusted to a series of secondary jurisdictions called the States. 656. The Union Dependent on the States.-The Constitution of 1787 enlarged the sphere of the National Government, and gave it power to act directly upon the people irrespective of the States. But it is still necessary for the States to assist in keeping the machinery of this Government in motion, as well as to exercise their own proper powers. The Constitution assumes: (1) That the Legislatures will fix qualifications for the electors of Representa tives; (2) That the States will conduct or manage the elections of Representatives; (3) That the Legislatures will elect Senators; and (4) That each State will appoint Presidential Electors. Plainly, if the States should fail to perform these duties, or any of them, the National system would fall into ruins. Here the National Government has no coercive power whatever. Hence the State Governments are part and parcel of the National Government; or, as Judge Jameson puts it, "The constitutions of all the States form a part of the Constitution of the United States.'' 1 657. Proper State Sphere.-But, important as are the National functions performed by the State, they do not determine the proper State sphere, but are only incidental and secondary. The real sphere of the State is the exercise of those powers of government which are not delegated to the Nation or forbidden to the State. These pow ers have been treated with some neglect both by practical politicians and by students of Political Science. The causes are obvious; in the division of powers made a century ago, the more imposing ones were assigned to the Nation, the less imposing to the States; National politics have grown at the expense of State politics; Washington is a larger political theater than Albany or Columbus. 658. Relations of the Citizen to the two Jurisdictions. Important as the powers of the Nation are, the common citizen, in time of peace, has few relations with it outside of the Post Office Department, while his relations with the State are numerous and constant. Said President Garfield in 1871: "It will not be denied that the State government touches the citizen and his interests twenty times where the National Government touches him once. For the peace of our streets and the health of our cities; for the administration of justice in nearly all that relates to the security of person and property, and the punishment of crime; for the education of our children, and the care of unfortunate and dependent citizens; for the collec 1 The Constitutional Convention, pp. 87, 88. tion and assessment of much the larger portion of our direct taxes, and for the proper expenditure of the same-for all this, and much more, we depend upon the honesty and wisdom of our General Assembly [of Ohio], and not upon the Congress at Washington." 1 Mr. Woodrow Wilson, discussing the same subject, says the twelve greatest subjects that have occupied the public mind of England in the present century are: Cathclic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, the abolition of slavery, the amendment of the poor laws, the reform of municipal corporations, the repeal of the corn laws, the admission of the Jews to Parliament, the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the alteration of the Irish land-laws, the establishment of national education, the introduction of the ballot, and the reform of the criminal law. And all of these except the corn laws and the abolition of slavery would have been, under our system, so far as they could be dealt with at all, subjects for State regulation exclusively. 2 1 Works Vol. I., p. 733. 2 The State, p. 487. CHAPTER L. STATE CONSTITUTIONS. REFERENCES. Jameson, The Constitutional Convention (particularly Chap. IV.); Hitchcock, American State Constitutions; Poore, The Federal and State Constitutions, etc. The origin of this class of governmental instruments was treated in Chapter IV. More definitely, the following topics were considered: Independence, the Colonies Reorganized as States, the First Constitutions, Sources of the New Constitutions, Models of the New Constitutions, the Transition from Colony to State. Only one of these topics calls for fuller treatment. 659. The First Constitutions. These were framed by State conventions and congresses, some of them composed of members of the Legislatures, and some of them composed of men especially elected for that purpose. The constitution of Massachusetts was the only one submitted to the people for ratification. Connecticut and Rhode Island, finding the charters granted by Charles II. in 1662 and 1663 sufficient for their purposes, did not frame constitutions until 1818 and 1842. The following are the dates of the Constitutions of the eleven other States:1 New Hampshire, January 5, 1776. New Jersey, July 3, 1776. Maryland, November 11, 1776. 1776. Georgia, February 5, 1777. Pennsylvania, September 28, 1776. Massachusetts, June 15, 1780. 1 With a single exception, the above dates are given on the authority of Poore. He does not tell us when the constitution of Massachusetts took effect. The following information is furnished by the Office of the Attorney-General of that State. A constitution framed by the General Court of 1777-78, acting as a constituent assembly, was submitted to the people and rejected. In September, 1779, |