The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-16

more ValuaDle acquisitions, EaCl OF these
successive acquisitions has encountered oppo-
sition and has been attended with inconve-
niences, but the latter have all been counter
balanced by precious compensations. This
will doubtless prove to be the case with our
last accession of territory, and our Fourth of
July orators can boast with better reason than
ever that ours is surely great country"
Territorial Expansion and State Rights.
from the WOrld.
The acquisition of Russian America, and
the visions that acquisition opens of still far
ther territorial ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, may properly
recall attention to the temporarily repudiated
doctrine of State rights. When we have
acquired Lower California, and Canada, and
Cuba, and the Bermudas, and the Sandwich
Islands, how are we to govern so vast an en-
pire By one Of these two methods-either
by making its VARIOUS local divisions self
governing, or by making the central Govern
ment so strong and absolute that it can propel
the vital current of authority to the remotest
eXtremltles of so extensive a territory. If we
go on enlarging we must either make haste
to return to the safe principle of local self
government, or we shall be compelled to eX-
change our republican forms for a great auto
cracy, which, under our circumstances, would
presently totter and fall to pieces beneath its
own tremendous weight.
Our position is, that the State rights doc
trine is not an arbitrary dctum of our fore
fathers, but that its foundations lie in the i'm
mutable nature of things. The Constitution
is valuable only because it conforms TO the
wise ordination OF nature. We must dismiss
the shallow notion that the truth of the State
rights doctrine is a mere question of inter
preting an old document which might lust as
well have been made different as made what
it is, and which we are just as competent to
alter as our ancestors were to frame. That
the State rights doctrine is found in the Con-
stituti0n may have been owing to accident to
caprice, to wilfulness, to a temporary political
eXpedency, to the spirit of the age in which
! the Constitution was formed. On any of these
suppositons, it would deserve no reverence.
But if it exists in the Constitution because it
first existed in the nature of things; it, from
the very genius of free institutions, it is inn
possible that they should expand over a large
area except in conjunction with local self
government then it will be found as i'm
practicable to argue down and discard the
principle of State rights as it would be to
argue down and suppress the ebb and flow Of
the tides.
1t is among the fundamental maxims of free
government that the laws shall be made by
one body of men and administered by
another; in other words, that the legislative
and judicial functions shall be exercised by
different departments. In an absolute mon
archy where the chief executive both makes
the laws and administers them, the laws may
be perpetually altered to suit the occasion,
and legal controversies can at any time be cut
short by the arbitrary will of the sovereign.
But it is of the very essence of free govern
ment that there should be a separate and in
dependent judiciary, with a urisdic-
ton co-extensive with the law.mal1ing
power. Legal rights can be main
tanned only in the courts, and as the
laws proceeding from one authority should
have one consistent Interpretation, there must
of necessity be one Supreme Court of Appeals
to enforce uniformity upon the inferior tribu-
mails. If, therefore, a free Government, eX-
tending over vast area with infinitely diver
sifed interests, does not restrict it's juris-
diction to very few necessary objects, there
is no possibility Of an adequate judiciary
system for the administration of its laws.
Even in the single State of New York,
the growth of business has outrun the
suffciency Of our highest Court. There is
, a practical denial of justice by the inability
of our Court of Appeals to keep within
several years of the close of its calendar,
Now imagine that not only all this mass
of business, but that of all the States
and OF twO-thirds of the North American
Court of the United States, in addition to
the properly Federal cases which come before
that tribunal. This is what must necessarily
i take place II Congress continues to draw the
. local concerns of the States within the vortex
i OF its law-making power. The Government
?, would then inevitably break down by the
II want of Judiciary adequate to administer the
j. laws. II would be easy enough, to be sure
Il to organize suihcienoy OF inferior courts; bu