Pelatiah Webster, in 1783, first expressed the idea that a Federal Government could be formed that "should act, not on the States, but directly on individuals." (To him Dr. Bledsoe refers in note on page 52 of the work under review, but inadvertently gives the credit of the idea mentioned to Noah Webster.) The former, it is true, conceived the idea of the possibility of a divided sovereignty; but even by him, the idea that the States could surrender, absolutely, certain sovereign rights as individuals might surrender certain natural rights seems not to have been clearly defined. He saw as but "through a glass, darkly" on this subject. In truth neither he nor any of his contemporaries had any aid toward reaching the conclusion that a divided sovereignty might be made absolute, from any historic light upon the matter.
HANNIS TAYLOR'S VIEW.
As we now know, as expressed by many modern writers and speakers, but by none more clearly and succinctly than by the learned author, Mr. Hannis Taylor, in his article in the North American Review (Vol. 185, No. 8, pp. 816-7):
"From the days of the Greek Leagues down to the making of the present Constitution of the United States, all Federal Governments have been constructed upon a single plan, at once clumsy and inefficient. The most perfect of the Greek Leagues was the Achaian, of which the founders really knew nothing. .. ..
"The only Federal Governments with whose internal organizations the builders of the Federal Republic were really familiar, and whose histories had any practical effect upon their work, were those which had grown up between the Low-Dutch communities, at the mouth of the Rhine, and the High-Dutch communities in the mountains of Switzerland and upon the plains of Germany. Down to the making of our present Federal Constitution, the confederation of Swiss Cantons, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the German Confederation, really represented the total advance made by the modern world in the structure of Federal Governments. Such advance was embodied in the idea of a Federal system made up of a union of States, cities, or districts, representatives from which composed a single Federal Assembly, whose supreme power could be brought to
