UNDERSTANDING FEDERAL AND NATIONAL
GOVERNMENT
AND THE BASIC POWERS OF EACH
"Under the existing Confederacy,
Congress represents the States, not the people of the States: their
acts operate on the States, not on the individuals. The case will
be changed in the new plan of Government."
"National" implied a
Government which should "directly operate on individuals and possess
compulsive power on the people of the United States"---"Federal"
implying a Government of compact, resting for enforcement of its acts
"on the good faith of the parties." (Notice there was so much
misunderstanding that the terms had to be defined, so they understood
what kind of government they were to form), "The Making of the
Constitution" by Charles Warren (around page 147).
The controlling idea of this NWO position is to do away with
the Federative feature in the Constitution, and to merge the separate
sovereignties of the several States into one Incorporate Union; and
thus to form, of all the States, one single National Republic, instead
of a Federal Republic of distinct States.
The great vice or evil to the NWO under the Constitution as it
then existed, which was generally admitted, was, that many of the laws
of the Union applied only to States, in their corporate capacity, and
did not act directly upon the people on the subjects constitutionally
embraced in them. As the Constitution then stood, many of the
Acts of
the Congress were binding primarily only on the States, and required
the subsequent action of the State Legislatures to carry them into
effect. Thus, when all the States" in Congress assembled" enacted
that
certain quotas of money should be raised by the States respectively,
the collection of the amount required of each depended upon the
subsequent action of its Legislature. This was a very serious
evil, as
some of the States were slow in raising their quotas.
Alexander H. Stephens' "History of the United States"
Black's Law Dictionary further clarifies the distinction between a
nation and a society by clarifying the the differences between a
national government and a federal government, and keep in mind that our
government is called "federal government":
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. The government of a whole nation, as
distinguished form that of a local or territorial division of the
nation, and also as distinguished form that of a league or
confederation.
“A national government is a government
of the people of a single state or nation, united as a community by
what is termed
the “social compact,’ and possessing complete and perfect supremacy
over persons and things, so far as they can be made the lawful objects
of civil government. A federal government is distinguished from a
national government by its being the government of a community of
independent and sovereign states, united by compact. Piqua
Branch Bank v. Knoup, 6 Ohio St. 393. [Black's Law
Dictionary, Revised Fourth Edition, 1968, p. 1176]
Patrick Henry in Debates in the 1788 Virginia debates, stated on
June 4, 1788:
" I have the highest veneration of
those Gentleman,--- but, Sir, give me leave to demand, what right had
they to say, We, the People? My political curiosity,
exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to
ask who authorized them to speak the language of , We, the People,
instead of We, the States? States are the characteristics, and the soul
of the confederation. If the States be not the agents of this
compact, it must be one of great consolidated National Government of
the people of all the States."
In
order to understand this issue, it is necessary to begin with the
basics. Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution did not
consolidate the several States or their people into a single nation.
The Constitution simply modified the federal system of government that
had been established by the Articles of Confederation. The word federal
has a very important meaning. Shortly after his death in 1850, John C.
Calhoun's essay entitled A Discourse on the Constitution and Government
of the United States was published in book form. The following excerpt
is a concise definition of the word federal as it relates to the
federal system of government established by the Constitution:
It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a
political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals,
that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it
more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the
government of a community of States, and not the government of a single
State or Nation.
As stated by Mr. Calhoun, the federal government is the States'
government. When the States adopted the Constitution, they created a
common agent called the federal government. They empowered their agent,
via the Constitution, with the authority to perform limited functions
that would be difficult or impossible for the States to perform
individually. If the federal judiciary had the power to interpret the
Constitution, then the agent would be superior to the principals
because it could circumvent its grant of power and nullify the
Constitution through its rulings.
Thomas Jefferson discussed this principle in his draft of the
Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. These Resolutions were written in
response to an attempt by Congress to expand the criminal jurisdiction
of the federal government through a set of laws entitled the "Alien and
Sedition Laws." Jefferson wrote:
The several states composing the United States of America are not
united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general
government; but.by a compact under the style and title of a
Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they
constituted a general government for special purposes [and] delegated
to that government certain definite powers.and.whensoever the general
government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative,
void, and of no force.To this compact each state acceded as a state,
and is an integral party, its co-states forming, as to itself, the
other party.The government created by this compact was not made the
exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to
itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the
Constitution the measure of its powers.
The State of Virginia also adopted a set of resolutions in
response to the "Alien and Sedition Laws." These resolutions defined
the nature of the Constitution and the character of the federal
government. The Virginia Legislature also defined the Constitution as a
compact between the several States. These resolutions paralleled
Jefferson's overview of the Constitution and re-affirmed the principle
that the States, not the federal judiciary, had the power, in the last
resort, to define the extent of the powers delegated to their federal
government. The Virginia Resolutions stated in part:
[T]his Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it
views the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the
compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense
and intention of the instrument constituting the compact as no further
valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that
compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous
exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States
who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to
interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining
within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties
appertaining to them.
As stated above, federal courts are not the final arbitrator of
the Constitution or the extent of the powers delegated to the federal
government. Since the Constitution is a compact between the several
States, and the federal government is not a party, but the result of
that compact, it lacks the authority to define the extent of the powers
delegated to it by the States. Only the individual States, as the
exclusive parties to the compact between themselves, possess that
power. If the federal judiciary had the power to interpret the
Constitution, then it would be meaningless as a written document,
because, as stated by Jefferson, judicial discretion, not the
Constitution, would determine the measure of the federal power.
In his book, The Federal Government, Its True Nature and
Character,
Able Upshur, who had been Secretary of State and Secretary of the Navy,
devoted a large portion of his commentary to this subject. Published in
1868, this might be the finest book ever written on the Constitution
and system of government created by that document.
The Federal Government is the creature of the States. It is not a
party to the Constitution, but the result of it the creation of that
agreement which was made by the States as parties. It is a mere agent,
entrusted with limited powers for certain specific objects; which
powers and objects are enumerated in the Constitution. Shall the agent
be permitted to judge the extent of its own powers, without reference
to his constituent? To a certain extent, he is compelled to do this, in
the very act of exercising them, but always in subordination to the
authority by whom his powers were conferred. If this were not so, the
result would be, that the agent would possess every power which the
agent could confer, notwithstanding the plainest and most express terms
of the grant. This would be against all principle and all reason. If
such a rule would prevail in regard to government, a written
constitution would be the idlest thing imaginable. It would afford no
barrier against the usurpations of the government, and no security for
the rights and liberties of the people. If then the Federal Government
has no authority to judge, in the last resort, of the extent of its own
powers, with what propriety can it be said that a single department of
that government may do so? Nay. It is said that this department may not
only judge for itself, but for the other departments also. This is an
absurdity as pernicious as it is gross and palpable. If the judiciary
may determine the powers of the Federal Government, it may pronounce
them either less or more than they really are.
If the States did not grant the federal judiciary the power to
interpret the Constitution, then what is the proper role of the federal
courts in questions involving federal legislation and the Constitution?
When an act of Congress is appropriately challenged as not conforming
to the Constitution, the federal judiciary has only one duty-to lay the
article of the Constitution that is invoked beside the statute that is
challenged and decide whether the latter squares with the former. The
judiciary does not have the power to interpret the Constitution?it has
the power to scrutinize the statute being challenged to make sure it
falls within the scope of the powers delegated to the federal
government by the States via the Constitution.
In any contractual agreement involving the creation of an agent,
the final word on the extent of the powers granted to the agent rests
with the principals not the agent.