HKB
the law without appeal; and those provinces, styled pays d'etats, were authorized to refuse their assent to an impost which had been levied by the sovereign who represented the nation.
In the Union there is but one tribunal to interpret, as there is one legislature to make the laws; and an impost voted by the representatives of the nation is binding upon all the citizens.
In these two essential points, therefore, the Union exercises more central authority than the French monarchy possessed, although the Union is only an assemblage of confederate republics.
In Spain certain provinces had the right of establishing a system of customhouse duties peculiar to themselves, although that privilege belongs, by its very nature, to the national sovereignty. In America the congress alone has the right of regulating the commercial relations of the states. The government of the confederation is therefore more centralized in this respect than the kingdom of Spain. It is true that the power of the crown in France or in Spain was always able to obtain by force whatever the constitution of the country denied, and that the ultimate result was consequently the same; and I am here discussing the theory of the constitution.
FEDERAL POWERS.
After having settled the limits within which the federal government was to act, the next point was to determine the powers which it was to exert.
LEGISLATIVE POWERS.
Division of the legislative Body into two Branches.--Difference in the Manner of forming the two Houses.--The Principle of the Independence of the States predominates in the Formation of the Senate.--The Principle of the Sovereignty of the Nation in the Composition of the House of Representatives.--Singular Effects of the Fact that a Constitution can only be Logical in the early Stages of a Nation.
The plan which had been laid down beforehand for the constitution of the several states was followed, in many points, in the organization of the powers of the Union. The federal legislature of the Union was composed of a senate and a house of Representatives. A spirit of conciliation prescribed the observance of distinct principles in the formation of each of these two assemblies. I have already shown that two contrary interests were opposed to each other in the establishment of the federal constitution. These two interests had given rise to two opinions. It was the wish of one party to convert the Union into a league of independent states, or a sort of congress, at which the representatives of the several peoples would meet to discuss certain points of their common interests. The other party desired to unite the inhabitants of the American colonies into one sole nation, and to establish a government, which should act as the sole representative of the nation, as far as the limited sphere of its authority would permit. The practical consequences of these two theories were exceedingly different.