ppiness, my voice
would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the
public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union. In like manner, as far
as the sovereignty of the States cannot be reconciled to the happiness
of the people, the voice of every good citizen must be, Let the former
be sacrificed to the latter. How far the sacrifice is necessary, has
been shown. How far the unsacrificed residue will be endangered, is the
question before us.

Several important considerations have been touched in the course of
these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation
of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State
governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am
persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the
preponderancy of the last than of the first scale.

We have seen, in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies,
the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members,
to despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very
ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the
encroachments. Although, in most of these examples, the system has been
so dissimilar from that under consideration as greatly to weaken any
inference concerning the latter from the fate of the former, yet, as the
States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive
portion of active sovereignty, the inference ought not to be wholly
disregarded. In the Achaean league it is probable that the federal head
had a degree and species of power, which gave it a considerable likeness
to the government framed by the convention. The Lycian Confederacy, as
far as its principles and form are transmitted, must have borne a still
greater analogy to it. Yet history does not inform us that either of
them ever degenerated, or tended to degenerate, into one consolidated
government. On the contrary, we know that the ruin of one of them
proceeded from the incapacity of the federal authority to prevent the
dissensions, and finally the disunion, of the subordinate authorities.
These cases are the more worthy of our attention, as the external
causes by which the component parts were pressed together were much more
numerous and powerful than in our case; and consequently less powerful
ligaments within would be sufficient to bind the members to the head,
and to each other.

In the feudal system, we have seen a similar pr