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

ANTI-NATIONAL PHASES OF STATE GOVERN MENT.
HE rapid growth of the United States has developed a
new want in our system of government. In very general
terms it may be defined as the need of securing in some efficient
way a closer intercommunication and harmony of action between the separate States in matters of purely State jurisdiction.
It is the object of this essay to point out precisely the nature
and-exigency of the want referred to, and to suggest means of
supplying it.
The United States in relation to foreign powers is a nation
possessing all the attributes of an undivided sovereignty; but
in its internal organization and government, and in the relations
of the several States to each other, the United States is in only
a very qualified sense a nation; it is rather a congeries of independent powers. Viewed from within, the States are merged
in the federal government, or subordinated to it, in really few
particulars, and those particulars not the ones that enter most
deeply into the development and life of a people. All foreign
relations, including war and commerce, naturalization, bankruptcy, coinage of money, post-offices, patents and copyrights,
and the suppression of insurrections and invasions-this is a
substantially complete list of the interests committed to the
federal government, and as to these the States are welded together into national unity. But in all matters other than those
above enumerated each State is an independent sovereignty,
practically unhampered by the Union, and holding to the other
States, in law and in fact, the relations of aforeign government.
These statements are truisms, but many of the consequences
they involve are practically under-estimated. The legal separa
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