t new States, when admitted, were to enter "this Union." Had
another union been proposed in "any pointed manner," it would have
encountered not only "strong" but successful opposition. The disunion
between Great Britain and her colonies originated in the antipathy of
the latter to "rules and regulations" made by a remote power
respecting their internal policy. In forming the Constitution, this
fact was ever present in the minds of its authors. The people were
assured by their most trusted statesmen "that the jurisdiction of the
Federal Government is limited to certain enumerated objects, which
concern all members of the republic," and "that the local or municipal
authorities form distinct portions of supremacy, no more subject
within their respective spheres to the general authority, than the
general authority is subject to them within its own sphere." Still,
this did not content them. Under the lead of Hancock and Samuel Adams,
of Patrick Henry and George Mason, they demanded an explicit
declaration that no more power was to be exercised than they had
delegated. And the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution were
designed to include the reserved rights of the States, and the people,
within all the sanctions of that instrument, and to bind the
authorities, State and Federal, by the judicial oath it prescribes, to
their recognition and observance. Is it probable, therefore, that the
supreme and irresponsible power, which is now claimed for Congress
over boundless territories, the use of which cannot fail to react upon
the political system of the States, to its subversion, was ever within
the contemplation of the statesmen who conducted the counsels of the
people in the formation of this Constitution? When the questions that
came to the surface upon the acquisition of Louisiana were presented
to the mind of Jefferson, he wrote: "I had rather ask an enlargement
of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume
it by a construction which would make our powers boundless. Our
peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let
us not make it blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the
opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as
boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds,
they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that
instrument gives. It specifies and delineates the operations permitted
to the Federal