2941. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, State Governments and.—[further continued]..
With respect to our State
and Federal governments, I do not think
their relations correctly understood by foreigners.
[189]
They generally suppose the former
subordinate to the latter. But this is not the
case. They are coordinate departments of
one simple and integral whole. To the State
governments are reserved all legislation and
administration, in affairs which concern their
own citizens only, and to the Federal Government
is given whatever concerns foreigners,
or the citizens of other States; these functions
alone being made Federal. The one is
the domestic, the other the foreign branch of
the same government; neither having control
over the other, but within its own department.
There are one or two exceptions only to this
partition of power.—
To John Cartwright. Washington ed. vii, 358.
(M.
1824)
