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Sparks, Edwin Erle, 1860-1924

"The United States of America, Part 1"

How will it be when a member from New Hampshire
is to make out a road for Georgia?" Really, the carrying of the mails
was a power not expressed, but deduced, if fine distinctions were to
be made.
Still another power was expressly given to the Union which had not
existed under the Confederation and had never been exercised--the right
to create new States from original soil; to speak into existence rivals
of the agencies through which the Union itself had been created. When
the States gave this right to the Central Government, they furnished
a weapon most deadly to their continued supremacy. "No state shall be
deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States," declared
the Articles. It was to guard against this danger that the States in
ceding their western land, and the Central Government in accepting it,
had mutually agreed to convert it into States of a limited size as
rapidly as population would warrant. As has been shown, unsuccessful
steps had been taken under the Confederation to carry out this
agreement, "without the least colour of constitutional authority," as
Hamilton said in the _Federalist_.


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