It has
exercised the power in part, by declaring some disqualifications, to
wit, those of not being twenty-five years of age, of not having been a
citizen seven years, and of not being an inhabitant of the State at the
time of election. But it does not declare, itself, that the member shall
not be a lunatic, a pauper, a convict of treason, of murder, of felony,
or other infamous crime, or a non-resident of his district; nor does
it prohibit to the State the power of declaring these, or any other
disqualifications which its particular circumstances may call for: and
these may be different in different States. Of course, then, by the
tenth amendment, the power is reserved to the State. If, wherever the
constitution assumes a single power out of many which belong to the same
subject, we should consider it as assuming the whole, it would vest
the General Government with a mass of powers never contemplated. On the
contrary, the assumption of particular powers seems an exclusion of all
not assumed. This reasoning appears to me to be sound; but, on so recent
a change of view, caution requires us not to be too confident, and that
we admit this to be one of the doubtful questions on which honest men
may differ with the purest motives; and the more readily, as we find we
have differed from ourselves on it.
I have always thought, that where the line of demarcation between
the powers of the General and State governments was doubtfully or
indistinctly drawn, it would be prudent and praiseworthy in both
parties, never to approach it but under the most urgent necessity.
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