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fully guarded in the organization of our government. To settle the relative weight of the states in the system; and to secure to each the means of maintaining its proper political consequence in its operation, were amongst the most difficult duties in framing the Constitution. No one subject occupied greater space in the proceedings of the Convention. In its final adjustment, the large states had assigned to them a preponderating influence in the House of Representatives, by having there a weight proportioned to their members, but to compensate which, and to secure their political rights against this preponderance, the small states had an equality assigned them in the senate, while in the Constitution of the Executive branch, the two were blended. To secure the consequence allotted to each, as well as to insure due deliberation in legislation, a veto is allowed to each in the passage of bills; but it would be absurd to suppose, that this veto placed either above the other; or was incompatible with the portion of the sovereign power allotted to the House, the Senate or the President.
It is thus that our system has provided appropriate checks, with a veto to ensure the supremacy of the Constitution over the laws; and to preserve the due importance of the states, considered in reference to large and small, without creating discord or weakening the beneficient energy of the government, and so in the division of sovereign authority between the general and state governments, and in granting an efficient power to the latter, to protect by a veto the minor against the major interests of the community, the framers of the Constitution acted in strict conformity with the principle which invariably prevails, throughout the whole system whenever separate interests exist. They were in truth no ordinary men. They were wise and practical men, enlightened by history and their own enlarged experience, acquired in conducting our country through a most important revolution; and understood profoundly the nature of man and of government. They saw and felt that there existed in our nature the necessity of a government, which to effect the object of government must have adequate powers. They saw the selfish predominate over the social feelings, and that without a government with such powers, universal conflict and anarchy must prevail among the component parts of society: but they also clearly saw, that our nature remaining unchanged by change of condition, that unchecked power from this very predominance of the selfish over the social feeling, which rendered government necessary, would of necessity lead to corruption and oppression on the part of those invested with its exercise. Thus the necessity of government and of checks originate in the same great principle of our na-
