Union)
For the Independent Journal.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:
AN OBJECTION, of a nature different from that which has been
stated and answered, in my last address, may perhaps be likewise
urged against the principle of legislation for the individual
citizens of America. It may be said that it would tend to render
the government of the Union too powerful, and to enable it to absorb
those residuary authorities, which it might be judged proper to
leave with the States for local purposes. Allowing the utmost
latitude to the love of power which any reasonable man can require,
I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons
intrusted with the administration of the general government could
ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that
description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State
appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition.
Commerce, finance, negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the
objects which have charms for minds governed by that passion; and
all the powers necessary to those objects ought, in the first
instance, to be lodged in the national depository. The
administration of private justice between the citizens of the same
State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a
similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be
provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a
general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that there should
exist a disposition in the federal councils to usurp the powers with
which they are connected; because the attempt to exercise those