The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded. It is the one immortal tribute of America to political science, for state rights are at the same time the consummation and the guard of democracy.
ACTON, LORD JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG, Lectures on the French Revolution: The Influence of America, MacMillan and Co., Limited, London (1910)Political science imperatively demands that powers shall be regulated by multiplication and division.
ACTON, LORD JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG, Lectures on the French Revolution: The Constitutional Debates, MacMillan and Co., Limited, London (1910)The power to exit from any given state loses much of its effectiveness when Congress can regulate private market behavior on a national scale...Federalism as a counterweight to the monopoly sovereign is undercut by the massive expansion of federal power under the commerce clause.
EPSTEIN, RICHARDWhat an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the State powers into the hands of the General Government.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to Gideon Granger, 1800[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government or another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to C. Hammond, 1821I declare that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend.
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, quoted in ACTON, LORD JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG, Lectures on the French Revolution: The Influence of America, MacMillan and Co., Limited, London (1910)[A] central government acquires immense power when united to administrative centralization. Thus combined, it accustoms men to set their own will habitually and completely aside; to submit, not only for once or upon one point, but in every respect and at all times.
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter VI know of no one who does not regard provincial independence as a great benefit...I have heard a thousand different causes assigned for the evils of the State; but the local system was never mentioned amongst them.
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter VI have already pointed out the distinction which is made between a centralized government and a centralized administration. The former exists in America, but the latter is nearly unknown there. If the directing power of the American communities had both these instruments of government at its disposal...freedom would soon be banished from the New World...In the American republics the activity of the central government has never as yet been extended beyond a limited number of objects sufficiently prominent to call forth its attention....The majority is become more and more absolute, but it has not increased the prerogatives of the central government...and although the despotism of the majority may be galling upon one point, it cannot be said to extend to all.
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter XVI