never possessed the essential rights of sovereignty” and that “these had always been vested in the Congress then existing. The charge is incredible, when it is recollected that the second of the Articles of Confederation emphatically declares “that each State retains its sovereignty freedom & independence and every power &c, which is not expressly delegated to the U. S. in Congs. assembled”
It is quite possible that J.M. might have remarked that certain powers attributes of sovereignty had been vested in Congs; for that was true as to the powers of war, peace, treaties &c” But that he should have held the language ascribed to him in the notes of Mr. Yates, is so far from being credible, that it suggests a distrust of their correctness in other cases where a strong presumptive evidence is opposed to it.
Again, J M. is made to say “that the States were only great political corporations having the power of making by-laws, and these are effectual only if they were not contradictory to the general confederation”
Without admitting the correctness of this statement in the sense it seems meant to convey, it may be observed that according to the theory of the old confederation, the laws of the States contradictory thereto would be ineffectual. That they were not so in practice is certain, and this practical inefficacy is well known to have been the primary inducement to the exchange of the old for the new system of Govt. for the U.S.
Another charge agst. J.M. is an “opinion that the States ought to be placed under the controul of the General Govt. at least as much as they formerly were under the King & Parliament of G.B.”
The British power over the Colonies, as admitted by them, consisted mainly of 1. the Royal prerogatives of war & peace, treaties coinage &c. with a veto on the Colonial laws as a guard agst. laws interfering with the General law, and with each other: 2 the parliamentary power of regulating commerce, as necessary to be lodged somewhere, and more conveniently there than elsewhere. These powers are actually vested in the Federal Govt. with the difference, that for the veto power is substituted the general provision that the Constitution & laws of the U.S. shall be paramount to the Constitutions & laws of the States; and the further difference that no tax whatever should be levied by the British Parliament, even as a regulation of commerce; whereas an indefinite power of taxation is allowed to Congress, with the exception of a tax on exports, a tax the least likely to be resorted to. When it is considered that the power of taxation is the most commanding of powers, the one for which G. Britain contended for, and the Colonies resisted by a war of seven
