imperious, tyrannical exercise of centralized power under the
specious name of State rights. The evil is such a constantly
increasing one under the old constitutions, that they are being
revised in many States with special intent to check this
centralizing tendency. New York has now a commission sitting, and
Pennsylvania a convention in session, for the purpose of revising
their constitutions, and attention has been especially directed
to this dangerous feature of State centralization. The new
constitution of Illinois limits the passage of special laws by
its legislature to certain specified subjects, leaving all local
interests in the hands of local corporations. The need of the
hour--and, in fact, I may say the new tendency of the hour--is
toward diffused power within the limits of States in matters
pertaining solely and entirely to their small or local interests.

The centralization that fortifies and secures liberty is National
centralization, which we have traced through six steps since
1776, and which has, within the last ten years, received a new
impetus by the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments, and which, as
they successively followed each other at short intervals, may be
termed the seventh, eighth, and ninth steps in centralization. By
and through these three amendments the Nation fortified and
enlarged its powers in reference to personal rights. It defined
citizenship; it secured the exercise of the ballot--and we can
not fail to see that in these last three centralizing steps, it
more broadly than ever before enlarged the bounds of liberty. The
protection of citizens of the Nation, by the Nation, is the
national duty.

This is the second tendency of which I spoke. Most persons who
have been awake to the evils of State centralization, have
applied the same rules of judgment to National centralization.
The two are dissimilar as are darkness and light. State
centralization is tyranny; National centralization is freedom.
State centralization means special laws; National centralization
means general laws. The continued habit of States to make laws
for every part of their own boundaries brought to the surface the
"State rights" theory which precipitated upon us our civil war.
States had become so absolute in themselves that out of it g