Taking the mean for the distance, the amount will be eight hundred
and sixty-eight miles and three-fourths. The mean distance from the
Atlantic to the Mississippi does not probably exceed seven hundred
and fifty miles. On a comparison of this extent with that of
several countries in Europe, the practicability of rendering our
system commensurate to it appears to be demonstrable. It is not a
great deal larger than Germany, where a diet representing the whole
empire is continually assembled; or than Poland before the late
dismemberment, where another national diet was the depositary of the
supreme power. Passing by France and Spain, we find that in Great
Britain, inferior as it may be in size, the representatives of the
northern extremity of the island have as far to travel to the
national council as will be required of those of the most remote
parts of the Union.
Favorable as this view of the subject may be, some observations
remain which will place it in a light still more satisfactory.
In the first place it is to be remembered that the general
government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and
administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain
enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic,
but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all
those other subjects which can be separately provided for, will
retain their due authority and activity. Were it proposed by the
plan of the convention to abolish the governments of the particular
States, its adversaries would have some ground for their objection;
though it would not be difficult to show that if they were
abolished the general government would be compelled, by the
principle of self-preservation, to reinstate them in their proper
jurisdiction.