Upward of half a century has elapsed since the adoption of the
present form of government. It would be an object more highly
desirable than the gratification of the curiosity of speculative
statesmen if its precise situation could be ascertained, a fair
exhibit made of the operations of each of its departments, of the
powers which they respectively claim and exercise, of the
collisions which have occurred between them or between the whole
Government and those of the States or either of them. We could
then compare our actual condition after fifty years' trial of our
system with what it was in the commencement of its operations and
ascertain whether the predictions of the patriots who opposed its
adoption or the confident hopes of its advocates have been best
realized. The great dread of the former seems to have been that
the reserved powers of the States would be absorbed by those of
the Federal Government and a consolidated power established,
leaving to the States the shadow only of that independent action
for which they had so zealously contended and on the preservation
of which they relied as the last hope of liberty. Without denying
that the result to which they looked with so much apprehension is
in the way of being realized, it is obvious that they did not
clearly see the mode of its accomplishment The General Government
has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States.
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