a statement of the general nature of the constitutional restraints upon the states. By force of those restraints, a state cannot withdraw from the Union, nor deprive itself of its rights as one of the United States, nor emancipate itself from the constitutional limitations upon freedom of state action; it cannot have any international relations with foreign states, nor with any other of the United States; it cannot enter into treaties with foreign powers, nor make interstate compacts; it cannot engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay; it cannot grant letters of marque and reprisal; it cannot adopt any other than a republican form of state government, nor grant any title of nobility; it cannot prescribe the conditions of its citizenship, for the birth within the United States of any person subject to their jurisdiction, or the naturalization of any person under the acts of Congress, followed, in either case, by residence within a state makes the person so born or naturalized, and so residing, a citizen of that state; it cannot, in its regulation of the exercise of the right of suffrage by its citizens, discriminate because of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude; it cannot, in its action with regard to its own citizens or with regard to temporary denizens within its territory, abridge those privileges or immunities which are common to citizens of the United States, nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person

1 Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution requires the United States to guaranty to every state in this Union a republican form of government." It rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a state, and also to determine upon the means proper to be adopted to fulfil the guaranty of a republican form of government to the states: Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1, 42. Chase, C. J., pointed out in Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 727, that this constitutional obligation required the United States, after the suppression of the Rebellion, to re-establish the representation in Congress of the states lately in rebellion.

the equal protection of the laws; it cannot deny to citizens of other states those privileges and immunities of citizenship which it allows to its own citizens; it cannot tax the property of the United States, nor the agencies employed by the United States in the execution of its constitutional powers to such an extent as to interfere with the full performance by such agents of their duties to the United States, nor the subjects of foreign or interstate commerce in such a manner as to amount to a regulation of such commerce, nor lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws, nor lay any duty on tonnage; it cannot coin money, nor emit bills of credit, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; it cannot, by any law or by any act to which it, by its enforcement thereof, gives the force of a law deprive a party of the legal right of enforcing, or obtaining compensation for the breach of, an express and valid contract, executed or executory; it cannot regulate commerce, foreign, or interstate, or with the Indian tribes, by obstructing, or burdening, or discriminating against, such commerce; it cannot exercise judicial jurisdiction over persons or subject-matters rightfully withdrawn by the United States from its jurisdiction, and in its exercise of jurisdiction it cannot derogate from the supremacy of the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, nor fail to give full faith and credit to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state; it cannot pass any bill of attainder or ex post facto law; and it cannot so exercise its powers of police regulation as to interfere with the exercise of the constitutional powers of the United States, or, in other words, in such manner as to operate upon persons or property brought within its jurisdiction in the exercise

of powers granted to the United States, before such persons or property shall have lost their distinctive character and merged in the mass of persons or property within the territory of the state. Such are substantially the constitutional restraints upon the powers of the states; and their practical effect is, that, while limiting the powers of each state in that which concerns foreign nations, and in that which affects the interests of other states, and of the citizens of those other states, it yet reserves to each state full powers of self-government in all that affects only the interests of that state, and of its own citizens.

129. The Constitution was the result of a struggle between contending parties, the one fearing a disintegration of the Union as a consequence of the weakness of the confederation, and striving to create a nation, and the other mindful of the contest for the independence of the colonies, and seeking to sacrifice as little as possible of the autonomy of the states. Fortunately for the peace and prosperity of the country, and for the permanency of its free institutions, neither party triumphed, and their conflict of opinion gave birth to a government, which, though national in its relations to foreign powers, and in the directness of its action upon the citizens of the several states, is also federal in its reservation to the states and the people of all powers not expressly, or by necessary implication, granted to the United States. The distinguishing characteristics of the Constitution, thus created, are the limitation in terms of the powers confided to the United States, the reservation to the states of the right of local self-government, and that practical conservatism, which is the necessary consequence of the supremacy of a written Constitution, whose manner of amendment guards it against hasty changes. The government created by

that Constitution has stood the tests of time and growth; its nationality has survived the shocks of foreign, and of civil, war; and its recognition of the principle of home rule has overcome the disintegrating tendencies of the expansion of territory and the increase of population. That in the future as in the past the United States may escape the perils of dissolution and the dangers of consolidation, it is necessary that its Constitution be maintained in its integrity, and that the reserved rights of the states, and the supremacy of the United States within the limits of its delegated powers, be alike jealously guarded. So long as that just equipoise of federal and of state power shall be preserved, the states, united for the promotion of the general welfare, and independent in all matters of merely local concern, will triumph over all that may menace the perpetuity of their free institutions.