When Ronald Reagan proclaimed in his first inaugural “We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around,” he was not taking off on some libertarian tangent or making an obscure philosophical point. He was following in the footsteps of the Founding Fathers who erected a frame of government that began with the words “We the People.” He was also trying to return government to its important but limited role in people’s lives—a role that both political leaders and the people understood until 1912 but has been mostly misunderstood and abandoned since then. At Philadelphia in 1787, the Framers of the Constitution created a national government that would be effective—even energetic—in its functions but also limited to those functions. The people were to be the ultimate guardians of both the effectiveness and limitations of government. The only way such a republic—unprecedented in modern history—could work would be if the people acted as a vigilant and constitutionally-minded sovereign jealous of their rights.

The authority of the people is made clear in at least three respects in the Constitution, and their vitality is powerfully suggested in a fourth. First, the Constitution holds both the lawmakers and the executive accountable to the people through elections, whether direct or indirect. The foremost depository of the people’s will is obviously the House of Representatives, whose members are directly elected every two years. According to James Madison writing in The Federalist, every constitution is designed to find rulers with the wisdom and virtue to pursue the common good and to make sure those rulers remain virtuous while holding the public trust. Elections are the means to both of those ends. In other words, if those in office lose their virtue, they can be thrown out of office by the people through regular elections. The people are the true source of term limits.

Second, the Constitution embraces, indeed creates, the system known as federalism. Not only can the people exert their authority through elections at the federal (national) level, they can also throw their support behind the state governments against federal encroachment. The chief means of doing so in the original Constitution was through the Senate, whose members were elected by state legislatures. Indeed, the Framers of the Constitution originally thought that the people’s loyalties would lie overwhelmingly with the states, not the remote national government. Their opinion owed to the history of the Revolution—in which the states were extremely jealous of their powers; the confidence that men of great talents and ambitions at the national level would devote their energies to the high pursuits of “commerce, finance, negotiation, and war,” to quote Hamilton in The Federalist, not with local concerns; and the general tendency of human nature to prefer the things closest to us. (Not many people living in Dallas root for the Steelers.) To this end, should the national government extend its powers beyond those enumerated in Article I, section 8, the Senators—whose loyalties lie, and whose careers are made, not in the national capital but in the state capitals—would defend the prerogative of the states and thereby the liberties of the people.

Third, for the Constitution to be adopted, it was imperative that the first Congress adopt a Bill of Rights to be appended to it. The Bill of Rights, authored mostly by Madison, was meant to serve as an education to the people in what their rights are and an encouragement to them to guard those rights jealously. It is also abundantly clear what would be the greatest threat to their rights. The Bill of Rights begins with the words “Congress shall make no law respecting” and ends with the words “or to the people.” That is, the greatest threat to liberty would come from government—though republican—exceeding its constituted authority and encroaching on the rights of the people.

Finally, there is the latent suggestion in the Constitution that the people will be doing the vast majority of the work in civil society, and the government will be needed chiefly to establish the rule of law, to protect the society from internal and external enemies, and to set up a system of uniform commercial exchange.

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Imagine America faces a crisis of malnutrition. Millions of Americans are consuming too many processed foods and too few fresh foods. To stem the crisis, Congress enacts a comprehensive food reform law, requiring food sellers to meet minimum nutritional standards and provide access to healthy foods. The new law makes food more expensive, and many Americans opt out of the food market altogether, choosing to grow their own food instead. The food industry teeters on the verge of collapse. To prevent this collapse, Congress passes another law mandating that individuals buy a minimum amount of healthy food each month. Individuals who fail to buy the minimum amount face a stiff penalty.

Can Congress do this? Does the Constitution give the federal government power to make you buy healthy food? These questions are the heart of the Obamacare lawsuits—merely substitute “health insurance” for “healthy food.” If Obamacare’s health insurance mandate is upheld—as the federal Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in late June—individual liberty is in serious long-term jeopardy.

The rationale behind forcing individuals to buy health insurance versus healthy food is indistinguishable. The Obama Administration contends that, if people aren’t forced to buy health insurance, the market will collapse. Because Obamacare made health insurance more expensive—doing things like forbidding insurers from excluding those with preexisting conditions—many Americans, particularly healthy young people, would have decided to stay out of the health insurance market altogether and “self-insure.” Government must force these people to buy health insurance, the argument goes, to capture their premium dollars and help subsidize older, sicker people, keeping the overall market affordable and viable.

No matter how ardently you believe the health care system is flawed, or how angry you are at insurance companies, you must resist the temptation to let these considerations distract you from the broader and critically important constitutional choice posed by the health reform litigation. At stake are two related constitutional concepts: “federalism” and “limited and enumerated powers.” These concepts aren’t just quaint, outdated relics. They aren’t about “states’ rights.” They are both designed to protect individual liberty by restraining government’s innate tendency toward ever-expanding power.

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Weiner-mania: if the story weren’t so infuriating and sad – and such a damning commentary on our society – it would be laughable. Alas, here we stand at a moment in time when a sitting US congressman – a newly married, sitting US congressman – felt it was “okay” to take pictures of his erect penis and send them – unsolicited – to much younger females. And if that weren’t bad enough, we are led to believe that it is appropriate to have a “discussion” as to whether this idiot should resign or not. Of course he should resign! To believe otherwise is to engage in moral relativism and – contrary to what the Progressive Movement believes – that is a bad thing.

All one has to do to divine whether Congressman Weiner’s actions were as unacceptable as I feel they were, is to consider this singular point. If your daughter was to receive an unsolicited photograph of an erect penis from a man more than twice her age, a photo accompanied by salacious and suggestive comments, would that be acceptable to you? If you say yes then you have some terribly troubling issues that you should seek help with immediately.

The simple fact of the matter is that Mr. Weiner has both an ego and a low self-esteem problem. Obviously (and I am not a psycho-therapist, just a witness of the human condition), Mr. Weiner craves attention and validation. I find it ironic, yet disturbingly appropriate, that Mr. Weiner has chosen a profession that thrives on opinion polling. In the end, however, these personal foibles are owned by Mr. Weiner. But where they affect his personal life – and the lives of those related to him in both familial and professional manners, they also affect the lives of those who depend on Congress to do right by the electorate; the citizenry. To this end, We the People should also hold accountable those who elected Mr. Weiner to office.

Two moments in time lead me to insist that the country hold the voters of New York’s 9th District accountable for their vote to place Mr. Weiner in a position of power: the 17th Amendment and advancing federalism.

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Earlier this month three judges sat down from 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hash out the constitutionality of Obama’s heath care plan. The panel was in response to two lawsuits filed by Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli and Liberty University. Now it seems this is just as much as a political question than constitutional one. The judges were pulled from a pool of 14 candidates. The three judges selected could be decidedly in favor of Obama’s politics. That is because all three judges were Democratic appointees.

This is how they were “pulled.”

Under the rules of the 4th Circuit, judges are picked to sit on particular cases by “a computer program designed to achieve total random selection,” the court said. The third member of the panel, Judge Diana Motz of Maryland, is a President Clinton appointee.

Even if this comes off as a setback to those who find the law it’s very likely the appeals will wind up at the steps of the Supreme Court.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Virginia Speaker of the House of Delegates, William J. Howell, to discuss the landmark win against Obamacare earlier this week, and how states can band together to repeal the legislation.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Speaker Howell: Statement on Federal Judge Ruling Unconstitutional Individual Mandate in Federal Health Care Law
The Repeal Amendment
Mark Levin supports Repeal Amendment

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With the dust largely settled from the November 2010 elections, it is resoundingly clear that the majority of Americans are fed up with a government that has grown drunk on its own power and fat on their tax dollars. Tired of waiting for those in office to do the right thing, they took action and chose a different kind of leader to represent them.

The sentiment that drove voters is the heartbeat of my book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. In addition to pointing out where and how government has overflowed its boundaries, it explains how liberty is maximized by a limited government set closest to the people.

As a life-long conservative, I was more than pleased at the outcome of the 2010 elections, because I sense people reconnecting with the fundamental precepts of our republic, enunciated so clearly in the U.S. Constitution. As a governor, I’m particularly fond of the Tenth Amendment, and the narrow role it casts for the federal government.

Its key phrase reads…“powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Bill of Rights’ authors had seen the oppressive effect of a distant, centralized government, while the rugged vitality of the American colonies showed that government closest to the people truly governs best. In short, free people work harder, live better and take better care of one another.

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The great fear of all dictators is provoking rebellion before they are ready to handle it. So the Democrats, our Nation’s aspiring despots, have become refined experts at offering soothing, even encouraging, but always deceptive rhetoric about their sleazy, underhanded power grabs. Supported by a largely complicit mass media, they have brought our country to the breaking point.

But throughout history, the American people have repeatedly shown an amazing capacity for finding innovative solutions, often at the very last minute, to seemingly intractable crises. This fact of the indomitable, resourceful and defiant American spirit literally terrifies the left, and with good reason. They are now outed.

On Thursday, in Detroit, a federal district judge named George Caram Steeh ruled Obamacare constitutional. On Friday, Mike Pence, a Republican Congressman from Indiana, expressed his confidence that the Supreme Court will declare key sections of the bill unconstitutional.

I believe that Pence is right – and for three reasons: one principled, one personal, and one practical and political. The first is easy to grasp.

At stake, Pence asserts, is “whether or not the Constitution of the United States permits the government to order the American people to purchase goods or services, whether they want them or need them or not.” With this description of what is at issue, Judge Steeh, who was appointed to the court by William Jefferson Clinton, is in wholehearted agreement. As he puts it in his ruling,

The decision whether to purchase insurance or to attempt to pay for health care out of pocket, is plainly economic. These decisions, viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers, and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance.

It is his view that – since our “decisions” to buy or not buy insurance have an impact on the market – the federal government can make these decisions for us.

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Today marks Constitution Day. On 17 September 1787, in Philadelphia, the Framers of the American Constitution added their signatures to the document they had produced, and soon thereafter it was dispatched to the Continental Congress for consideration by the states. On this day, it is appropriate that we, their heirs, reconsider their handiwork and ask whether ours is still a constitutional government.

In their deliberations, the Framers confronted one great question, and it was largely on this question that the debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists during the ratification period turned. Can one establish an enduring republic on an extended territory? This is the question that Americans in this crucial period wrestled with.

As I have argued in earlier posts here and here and, in much greater detail, in my recent books Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, the Americans had reason to worry. In the late eighteenth century, it was almost universally agreed that what they were attempting could not succeed. Such was the argument that Montesquieu advanced in the first part of his authoritative book The Spirit of Laws, and he had grounds for advancing such a claim. Athens and Sparta were situated on territories of no great size, and the same could be said for early Rome and for Lucca, Florence, and Venice in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Of course, late republican Rome was an exception to the rule. Under the late republic, nearly everyone in Italy was a citizen, and that polity ruled the Mediterranean and beyond. But – as both Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy and Montesquieu in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and Spirit of Laws had pointed out — Rome was also the exception that proved the rule. It was a small republic that, by dint of conquest, came to be situated on an extended territory; and soon after it had expanded, it collapsed. The Framers of the American constitution faced a great challenge, and this they and their opponents among the Anti-Federalists knew all too well.

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This year marks the centennial of the Mann “White Slave Act,” when Congress made it a federal offence to transport a woman across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Though the act is still on the books (as former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer can tell you), and has been made gender-neutral, it is usually seen as a relic of nineteenth-century moralism. In fact, no act did more to overturn the nineteenth-century constitutional order. The Mann Act was boldly challenged the idea that the Constitution limited Congress’ power the ends enumerated in Article One, section eight. It established an all-purpose federal “police power” that now permits Congress to regulate just about everything.

By 1910, Congress had already taken some steps toward the establishment of a police power—outlawing, for example, the interstate shipment of lottery tickets and of impure food and drugs. The U.S. had recently ratified a multinational treaty to stamp out the international trafficking in prostitutes. The act’s proponents emphasized that it was an attack on the big business of “commercialized vice.” The press and U.S. officials, particularly U.S. Attorney Edwin Sims in Chicago, claimed that a vast “white slave trust” was operating in the country, when in fact there was little coerced prostitution at all.

The bill raised constitutional objections in the House, often from states-rights advocates. But prostitution was so universally reviled that most overcame their constitutional scruples. Rep. William Cox of Indiana had doubts as to the bill’s constitutionality, but said that he “would unhesitatingly resolve that doubt in favor of its constitutionality on account of the enormity of the crime sought to be stopped and the evil intended to be remedied…. Who can be hurt by its provisions? None but the guilty.” The bill’s sponsor, Illinois Republican James R. Mann, claimed that the white-slave traffic, “while not so extensive, is much more horrible than any black-slave traffic ever was.” New York Representative William Sulzer denounced the “quibbling in regard to the constitutionality of the provisions of this bill. In this frightful matter I shall not allow technicalities to cloud my sense of immediate duty.” In an ominous sign of Congress’ progressive abdication of its constitutional duty, he said, “The courts must take the responsibility for its constitutionality.”

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Illinois, like many states, is broke. Its credit is even worse than that of California and its highly publicized financial quagmire.  In such a fiscal environment, taxpayers are rightfully demanding that governments tighten up and are increasingly zealous about ensuring that money is spent productively. One way in which they may be surprised to find that local Illinois governments, along with those all over the country, collectively waste millions of dollars is by lobbying other governments for handouts.

Thanks to a recent report conducted by Diana Lopez of Sunshine Review, we know that local governments in Illinois have spent at least $6.2 million since 2005 on the lobbying of other governments. I say “at least” because local officials don’t like to disclose this information in a systematic and open way. The report, furthermore, only looked at the state’s 10 most populous counties, and also didn’t capture state government expenditures. So you can bet the actually numbers are much, much higher.

Individually it might be hard to blame these governments. They shouldn’t ever be spending taxpayer money lobbying for specific policies at higher levels of government, as many are, but in the case of begging for state and federal funds, they might be bringing in more money to the district than they are spending. They are therefore acting in their interests, as would be expected.  The problem is the offering of these funds in the first place, because it’s unequivocally bad for taxpayers and serves as a barrier to good governance.

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We have come a long way in the last twenty months. The President of the United States, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate have done for the Republican Party what no Republican could have accomplished. Just as rigor mortis was about to set in, they brought the old corpse back to life. For their efforts on our behalf, we should be forever grateful.

It is easy to lose perspective. It is easy to forget the dire straits in which the Republicans found themselves in and for some time after November, 2008. On the first Tuesday of that month, they were soundly defeated. The Democrats controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress. In time, when Al Franken was seated and Arlen Specter turned coat, the Democrats would attain El Dorado – a commanding majority in the Senate capable to bringing a filibuster to a screeching halt.

The Republicans initially thought that to get along they would have to go along. Had Nancy Pelosi thrown a little patronage their way when the so-called “stimulus” bill was being put together, had Barack Obama intervened to insist that she include earmarks for compliant Republicans in the House, a great many of them would have voted for the measure. It is to her that we owe their solidarity on the occasion of the vote. She is responsible for the fact that on that occasion they presented themselves to the world as a party of principle. If the Tea-Party Movement, which sprang up in the immediate aftermath of the bill’s passage, was not as resolutely hostile to the Republicans as it was to the Democrats, it was because Pelosi and her minions wanted vengeance, sought it, and got it.

Even when the Tea-Party Movement had emerged, the Republicans were not quick to realize what was in the offing. On 2 May 2009, some six months after the election, Jeb Bush emerged from a meeting with Mitt Romney and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor to announce that it was time for the Republicans to give up “nostalgia about the past” and to leave Ronald Reagan and all that he stood for behind. “You can’t beat something with nothing,” he observed, “and the other side has something. I don’t like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that.”

Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Eric Cantor may have been slow to grasp what was going on, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are dopes. It was not until early August in that year that I was willing to admit to myself that a political realignment in the Republicans’ favor was a serious possibility; and, as I noted in a piece posted in the aftermath of the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in early September, I was even then almost entirely alone. At that convention, I had attended a panel on Barack Obama’s first year as President at which not one of the distinguished students of American politics on the panel had in their prepared remarks even mentioned the Tea-Party Movement. And when I asked a question about it, I received a perfunctory answer. It was odd, my interlocutor remarked, that such a movement had emerged in the absence of institutional support. It was, I thought, very odd, very odd, indeed.

Now, thanks to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, the Republicans appear to be on the verge of an historic victory.

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The “Restoring Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial was inspiring. That should be just the beginning of a “Restoration Movement.” We don’t really need a revolution in America; all we need to do is restore what once was. I have a suggestion for another aspect of our Founding that needs to be restored—a suggestion that some will call unrealistic, yet one that the Founders considered essential.

Let’s restore the provision in the original wording of the Constitution that allows state legislatures to choose a state’s senators who serve in Congress.

Article I, Section 3 says, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.”

The reasoning was lucid: the people of each state already had direct representation into the national government via the House of Representatives; it was necessary as well to provide representation for the state governments in the national Congress. The goal was to make sure that laws passed by each state were not going to be overturned by the national government without good reason.

It was one of those key checks on power; it was to provide balance in the federal system.

Why did this change?

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`Left’ and `Right,’ Americans today call their political life out of joint, and therefore
painful. A news cycle cannot go by without another show of genteel hand-wringing over Tea-Party activists and radio-show callers—their rage, their seemingly endless array of `phobias,’ the menace they pose to decent people everywhere. Complementarily, Americans on the `Right’ are outraged or, more precisely, morally indignant. This has nothing to do with the thought-crimes and sentiment-felonies of racism, sexism, homophobia; rather, as seen in the recent passage of health-care legislation in the face of public opposition,, conservatives see a representative form of government that no longer, well, represents the majority of Americans.

Both sides feel a dislocation in America, a dislocation of public opinion from government.

In our Constitution “we the people” announce that we rule ourselves, through our elected representatives. But our eyes and ears tell us that our elected representatives listen not to us but to party leaders and other purveyors of elite or `advanced’ opinion, `expert’ opinion, `academic’ opinion. The Right deplores this; the Left says, `Thank God!’—or it would, if the Left did not now insist on a chaste separation of religiosity from state.

If public opinion in some form rules and thus preoccupies republican regimes, how should it rule? What is the proper relationship between citizens, their opinions, and their government?

As the designers of what Madison called the first “purely republican” regime in the modern world the American founders thought carefully about the role of public opinion in popular self-government. None thought more clearly than did Madison himself. And today, no one thinks more clearly about Madison than the Villanova University scholar, Colleen Sheehan. In her recent book, James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Sheehan she explains how Madison understood both the promise and the perils of American political life, particularly as they center on the question of public opinion.

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The Greek Comedy that is playing out in Europe shows the tremendous impact one man can have on the world in his lifetime.

The fellow we owe an attaboy and backslap is Nobel Prize winner Robert Mundell, who I’d argue has done more for the cause of conservatism than maybe our own minor deity Ronald Regan.  A short primer on Mundell:

• Father of Supply-side economics
• Father of the Euro
• Top adviser to Bejing on the Yuan

Imagine that.  Saving us in the 80’s, Europe in 90’s, and China in this century.  Preaching the same gospel wherever he goes… less currency is more.

I’m joking, lightly, about America joining the EU.   I’d prefer we stop printing money, and convince them to adopt the dollar.  Joking again, even less.  It has been great fun watching old socialist Europe become fiscally conservative over the last eleven years as every member country must hold deficits to 3% of GDP. And for that we thank Mundell.  Surely, delicious statements from across the pond, like this:

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Every once in a while one gets an insight into the sad state of higher education in the United States.

Back in 2008, when my agent was attempting to market the manuscript of what recently appeared in two companion volumes under the titles Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect, he ran into an unexpected snag.

None of the editors at the trade presses he approached had ever even heard of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu.

That came as a shock to me; and when I repeated the story to other students of the eighteenth century, they expressed amazement and dread.

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As Congress prepares to raise the debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, there are renewed calls from political elites for a value-added tax in America. The New York Times all but campaigned for the idea while touting it as a possible “cure for deficits.” But a VAT would do nothing to solve our deficit problem. Rather, it would supply new fuel to big government bureaucrats addicted to spending.

Supporters of a VAT mistakenly assume that increasing government revenues will lead to reduced budget deficits. While raising additional revenue may be part of any long term budgetary solution, it is not sufficient by itself – and probably not needed at all. Unless systemic changes are made, there is every reason to believe that additional revenues will simply be used to provide additional entitlements, pork barrel projects, and other wasteful government spending initiatives designed solely to enhance the reelection prospects of politicians. So long as deficit spending provides tangible benefits to the political class, they will continue to run deficits regardless of the amount of revenue raised.

Even in the midst of recession, federal revenues exceeded $2 trillion in fiscal year 2009. Can anyone really argue that $2 trillion is not enough for the federal government to perform the duties outlined in the Constitution?

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Virginia’s state troopers should have the authority to enforce federal immigration laws against the most dangerous criminal elements, Bob McDonnell, the state’s Republican candidate for governor has argued. This policy stance has larger federalist implications and should curry favor with 10^th amendment proponents, but it has earned little media attention throughout the campaign.

An obscure provision of federal law makes it possible for local and state officials to be trained as federal immigration agents. Section 287 (g)  of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorizes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to form partnerships that can be shaped to suit local priorities. Although this option has been available since 1996, most partnerships have been formed in just the past few years, according to ICE.

In an interview, McDonnell said he favors state-wide application of the 287 (g) program  because in his view it would compensate for the lack of resources available to ICE. While serving as attorney general, McDonnell worked with local governments in Prince William, Herndon and Rockingham counties to establish 287 (g) agreements. Tim Kaine, the state’s Democratic incumbent governor, has resisted using the program on a state-wide basis.

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To the People of the State of New York:

A FIFTH class of provisions in favor of the federal authority consists of the following restrictions on the authority of the several States:

1. “No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex-post-facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility. ”

The prohibition against treaties, alliances, and confederations makes a part of the existing articles of Union; and for reasons which need no explanation, is copied into the new Constitution. The prohibition of letters of marque is another part of the old system, but is somewhat extended in the new. According to the former, letters of marque could be granted by the States after a declaration of war; according to the latter, these licenses must be obtained, as well during war as previous to its declaration, from the government of the United States. This alteration is fully justified by the advantage of uniformity in all points which relate to foreign powers; and of immediate responsibility to the nation in all those for whose conduct the nation itself is to be responsible.

The right of coining money, which is here taken from the States, was left in their hands by the Confederation, as a concurrent right with that of Congress, under an exception in favor of the exclusive right of Congress to regulate the alloy and value. In this instance, also, the new provision is an improvement on the old. Whilst the alloy and value depended on the general authority, a right of coinage in the particular States could have no other effect than to multiply expensive mints and diversify the forms and weights of the circulating pieces. The latter inconveniency defeats one purpose for which the power was originally submitted to the federal head; and as far as the former might prevent an inconvenient remittance of gold and silver to the central mint for recoinage, the end can be as well attained by local mints established under the general authority.

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