y both stood for a strong
National Government, neither of them contemplated any encroachment by
that government on the principle of local self-government in local
matters or the police power of the states.

Marshall in one of his most powerful and far-reaching pronouncements in
support of the national supremacy[1] speaks of

that immense mass of legislation, which embraces everything
within the territory of a state not surrendered to the General
Government;... inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws
of every description ... are component parts of this mass.

[Footnote 1: _Gibbons v. Ogden_, 9 Wheat., 1, 203, 208.]

Later in the same opinion he refers to

the acknowledged power of a state to regulate its police, its
domestic trade, and to govern its own citizens.

... The power of regulating their own purely internal affairs
whether of trading or police.

Hamilton devotes an entire number of the _Federalist_[1] to combatting
the idea that the rights of the states are in danger of being invaded by
the General Government. In another place[2] he returns to the idea

that there is greater probability of encroachments by the
members upon the federal head, than by the federal head upon
the members

and concludes that it is to be hoped that the people

will always take care to preserve the constitutional
equilibrium between the general and the state governments.

[Footnote 1: _Federalist_, Number XVII.]

[Footnote 2: Id., Number XXXI.]

That hope has failed of realization. The "constitutional equilibrium" of
which Hamilton wrote is not being preserved. Some will say that this is
an age of progress and we are improving upon Hamilton. Others, however,
think we are forgetting the wisdom of the Fathers.

VIII

THE FEDERAL TAXING POWER AND THE INCOME TAX AMENDMENT

Had the World War come five years earlier the United States would have
been much handicapped and embarrassed in financing its share of the
struggle. One of the chief sources of national revenue during and since
the war, the income tax, would not have been available. The federal
income tax had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in
1895, and it was not until eighteen years later that the obstacle
pointed out by that decision was removed through the adoption of an
amendment to the Constitution. The Sixteenth or Income Tax Amendment was
proposed by Congress to t