Some profess to view the recent encroachments of federal power as a triumph of the principles advocated by Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall over the principles of Thomas Jefferson. Such a claim does Hamilton and Marshall an injustice. While they both stood for a strong National Government, neither of them contemplated any encroachment by that government on the principle of local self-government in local matters or the police power of the states.
Marshall in one of his most powerful and far-reaching pronouncements in support of the national supremacy[1] speaks of
that immense mass of legislation, which embraces everything within the territory of a state not surrendered to the General Government;… inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description … are component parts of this mass.
[Footnote 1: Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 1, 203, 208.]
Later in the same opinion he refers to
the acknowledged power of a state to regulate its police, its domestic trade, and to govern its own citizens.
… The power of regulating their own purely internal affairs
whether of trading or police.
Hamilton devotes an entire number of the Federalist[1] to combatting the idea that the rights of the states are in danger of being invaded by the General Government. In another place[2] he returns to the idea
that there is greater probability of encroachments by the members upon the federal head, than by the federal head upon the members
and concludes that it is to be hoped that the people