upreme. It is plain that to maintain the line between these two
sovereignties operating in the same territory and upon the same citizens is
a matter of no little difficulty and delicacy. Nothing has involved more
constant discussion in our political history than questions of conflict
between these two powers, and we fought the great Civil War to determine
the question whether in case of conflict the allegiance to the state or the
allegiance to the nation was of superior obligation. We should observe that
the Civil War arose because the constitution did not draw a clear line
between the national and state powers regarding slavery. It is of very
great importance that both of these authorities, state and national, shall
be preserved together and that the limitations which keep each within its
proper province shall be maintained. If the power of the states were to
override the power of the nation we should ultimately cease to have a
nation and become only a body of really separate, although confederated,
state sovereignties continually forced apart by diverse interests and
ultimately quarreling with each other and separating altogether. On the
other hand, if the power of the nation were to override that of the states
and usurp their functions we should have this vast country, with its great
population, inhabiting widely separated regions, differing in climate, in
production, in industrial and social interests and ideas, governed in all
its local affairs by one all-powerful, central government at Washington,
imposing upon the home life and behavior of each community the opinions
and ideas of propriety of distant majorities. Not only would this be
intolerable and alien to the idea of free self-government, but it would be
beyond the power of a central government to do directly. Decentralization
would be made necessary by the mass of government business to be
transacted, and so our separate localities would come to be governed by
delegated authority--by proconsuls authorized from Washington to execute
the will of the great majority of the whole people. No one can doubt that
this also would lead by its different route to the separation of our Union.
Preservation of our dual system of government, carefully restrained in each
of its parts by the limitations of the constitution, has made possible our
growth in local self-government and national power in the past, and, so far
as we can see, it is essential to the continuance of that gov