the Constitution, if that instrument be not a splendid pageant, or a delusive phantom of sovereignty?" It was, indeed, the object of the framers of the Constitution "to remove all possible doubt" from this subject. They desired neither a splendid pageant nor a splendid government. They knew that without this restriction ours would be both; and as powerful as splendid. They did not design that any power with which they thought proper to clothe it should be inoperative, for want of means to carry it into execution; but they never designed to give it the boundless field of its own mere will, for the selection of those means. Having specifically enumerated its powers, as far as was practicable, [ *106 ]*they never designed to involve themselves in the absurdity of removing, by a single clause, every restriction which they had previously imposed. They meant to assure their agent that, while none of the powers with which they had thought proper to clothe it should be nugatory, none of them should be executed by any means which were not both "necessary" and "proper."
The lovers of a strong consolidated government have labored strenuously, and I fear with too much success, to remove every available restriction upon the powers of congress. The tendency of their principles is to establish that legislative omnipotence which is the fundamental principle of the British Constitution, and which renders every form of written constitution idle and useless. They suffer themselves to be too much attracted by the splendors of a great central power. Dazzled by these splendors, they lose sight of the more useful, yet less ostentatious purposes of the State governments, and seem to be unconscious that, in building up this huge temple of federal power, they necessarily destroy those less pretending structures from which alone they derive shelter, protection and safety. This is the ignis fatuus which has so often deceived nations, and betrayed them into the slough of despotism. On all such, the impressive warning of Patrick Henry, drawn from the lessons of all experience, would be utterly lost. "Those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power and splendor, have also fallen a sacrifice and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom." The consolidationists forget these wholesome truths, in their
