It has its origin in the love of power. Power controlled or
abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which
it is controlled or abridged. This simple proposition will teach us
how little reason there is to expect, that the persons intrusted
with the administration of the affairs of the particular members of
a confederacy will at all times be ready, with perfect good-humor,
and an unbiased regard to the public weal, to execute the
resolutions or decrees of the general authority. The reverse of
this results from the constitution of human nature.
If, therefore, the measures of the Confederacy cannot be
executed without the intervention of the particular administrations,
there will be little prospect of their being executed at all. The
rulers of the respective members, whether they have a constitutional
right to do it or not, will undertake to judge of the propriety of
the measures themselves. They will consider the conformity of the
thing proposed or required to their immediate interests or aims;
the momentary conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its
adoption. All this will be done; and in a spirit of interested and
suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national
circumstances and reasons of state, which is essential to a right
judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local
objects, which can hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same
process must be repeated in every member of which the body is
constituted; and the execution of the plans, framed by the councils
of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the
ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have
been conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies; who have
seen how difficult it often is, where there is no exterior pressure
of circumstances, to bring them to harmonious resolutions on
important points, will readily conceive how impossible it must be to