Anti-National Phases of the State Government [pp. 85-102]

ANTI-,NA TIONAL PHASES OF STA TE GOVERNMENT. 97
the dominant ones. It is the natural result that State legislatures fail to represent the best intelligence or moral purity of
their constituencies, and are apt to be manipulated by ambitious leaders who are skilled in intrigue but are wholly unfitted
to deal with broad questions of statesmanship.
There are other causes lying deeper than the personal characteristics of those who enact the laws. There are no adequate
means by which legislators, however honest or able, can acquaint
themselves with precisely what the real needs of legislation demand from them; in acting upon a proposed law they are often
ignorant what legislative action the other States have already
adopted upon the same subject, what practical difficulties such
legislation in other States has encountered, in what directions
kindred laws have clashed in different States, suggesting dangers
to be avoided and differences to be harmonized; nor can they acquire this information, so essential to guide their action, without
studious and laborious research, for which, by their habits and
abilities, they are utterly unqualified. There is no official bureau
of political information, no official organ of communication between the States, through which the legislature of one State can
readily place itself en rapport with the other States, gain authentic
knowledge, by their experience, of a common want, and cooperate with them in carrying out a defined policy with intelligence and efficiency. So the State sovereignties plod on apart,
each in the path of its own narrow policy, legislating only for
the supposed interests of its own commonwealth, heedless of
harmony with its sister States, and practically ignoring the
inter-State conflict of jurisprudence. But meantime a consolidated nation has sprung up and has outgrown the States; the
constriction of State lines and of local laws and policies is galling to its energy and its growth; and there has arisen among
the people a yearning (often undefined, but yet clearly perceptible) to be governed by a national law and a firmly centralized
government.
It is exactly here, in my judgment, that lie the weakness and
the danger in the system of government devised by our fathers.
While it left each State supreme in all matters not delegated to
the federal government, it provided no agency to keep the States
upon parallel lines of policy, instituted no official organ of po.
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