Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1879-10-22
If Mr.. Jenkins will not venture to say

If Mr.. jenkins will not venture to say
this, he must take the other alternative
and say that the grantor of the powers
of the national agency was the people
for whom that agency was to act; that
the powers granted were inherent, not in
the states, nor in the people as severa
organized groups, but in the people 81
one great political society, before anc
independently of any constitution OF
grant OF them to governing agency
If he admits this, he must admit that
the source of the powers exercised by
the national organs and the source Of
the powers exercised by the state organs
il the same, namely, the sovereign
American people, and that the nationa
constitution and the state constitutions
are alike grants, or trusts, or commits
sions of authority to exercise certain
governmental powers, the one general
the others local.
None of the state sovereignty doc
trinaires, from the immortal Jefferson to
the mortal Jenkins, has ever ventured
to explain what is meant by the
declaration that powers not grant
ed to the United States nor prohibited
to the states are reserved to the states
respectively or to the people. They
have not told us how the power to make
general law regulating inland com.
merce, for example, which is not in
terms granted to the national legislature
can be reserved to the state Of Wiscon.
sin, or to the state of Illinois, or to "the
states respectively" Can Mr.. Jenkins
imagine the province of Wisconsin
regulating the commerce by rail
between the city of Milwaukee and
Boston, or the province of Illinois
regulating railway commerce between
San Francisco and New York? No such
regulative power is granted to congress.
1t can not be imagined as a power
reserved to the states respectively" 1t
can, however, be imagined as power
reserved to the American people collect
lively. But how does Mr.. Jenkins think
the American people would proceed to
exercise it, if not by their constituted
legislative agency, the American con-
gress!-to which no such power has been
granted in the terms of the written in.
strument, which Mr.. jenkins seems to
regard as the sum total of the "federal "
constitution.
What matters it how many supreme
courts, or how many statesmen, Judges,
lawyers, and immortal Jefersons, have
preached the theory which Mr.. jenkins
says is "the very primer of constitution
al history" if that theory beimpractica]
absurdity, contrary to all reason and all
facti That the earth is the centre of
the solar system, having the sun and all
the lesser planets revolving bout it, is no
new doctrine, and was, not many ages
ago, the very primer of astronomical
knowledge. It was doctrine held by all
the courts, sll the ecclesiastics, all the
judges, all the statesmen, lawyers, poll
ticians, kings, princes, schoolmasters, and
candidates for Office. But it was wholly
false. So is the Bourbon doctrine that
the state is the centre of our political sys.
tenn, and the nation only subsidiary orb,
revolving about the state, deriving all
its functions and powers by delegation
from it, doctrine wholly false. There
is no such thing as inherent political
power in the corporation or organic
groups of people called state. Every
government in America is q political
agency, having no power whatever of its
own, and exercising only such as are
granted by the sovereign will of the ma
ton. This was once denied by the state
right doctrinaires, who said that states
had inherent power and right to with
draw from the nation, that right not
being prohibited to them by the 'federal
compact" But it was found by expert.
ment that the theory of the constitution
held by all the courts, all the statesmen,
judges, lawyers, immortal JeHersons, and
mortal Jenkinses, was fallacious.