It would mean the consolidation of all
powers, and the practical extinction of local government. The attitude
of the two sides in the debate may be shown by one illustration
employed. Suppose the power to make a treaty or to raise an army had
been omitted from the Constitution, asked the Hamiltonians, could the
National Government in an emergency assume such rights from the preamble
and the powers expressed? Must it hesitate and temporise while the
blood of its citizens was being shed? Such an assumption of power,
replied the strict interpreters, might be excusable in an emergency,
but could be warranted as a practice only by an amendment to the
Constitution made in the manner it prescribed.
The present situation and the compelling force which had produced it
were manifest when those who favoured giving the Union such implied
powers as would make it effective pointed out many instances of
implication of which Congress had already been guilty; such as accepting
land for lighthouses, defining crimes under power to establish courts,
and even creating corporations in the shape of the North-West and the
South-West territories.
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