400 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE, [June 19, 
A little farther on he says: 
1“ A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the 
full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the 
complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from 
every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of 
the people. As the duties of superintending the national defense and 
of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence in- 
volve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits 
can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no 
other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the 
community.” 
No doubt. But the demands upon the means and powers of 
the states in executing their function of providing for the domestic 
peace, justice and prosperity are equally indefinite and unlimited 
and require a like domestic power with ‘‘no other bounds than 
the exigencies of the ‘states’ and the resources of the community.”’ 
Hamilton recognized this and sought to supply such indefinite 
powers from what he considered their true source,’ the national 
government. ‘That was the meaning of his scheme for local federal 
magistrates and United States justices of the peace. 
That method did not commend itself to his fellow-citizens. 
They preferred to believe that they had, as was supposed by the 
makers of it, and as he had argued at the time of its creation, a 
system of divided sovereignty, and that these indefinite powers 
were lodged in both state and federal governments. The fashion 
came in with the case of Mayor of New York vs. Miln of styling this 
“indefinite supremacy ’’ supposed to be lodged in the state the 
“‘police power.’’ ‘This was especially true of those who wished 
to minimize the influence of the states while asserting it. 
The federal government was generally supposed to be one of 
enumerated powers, but Marshall, following Hamilton, had be- 
stowed upon it—or, if the expression is preferred, had found in it 
—with the consent and approval of practically all his fellow- 
citizens, the additional power of self-preservation. This turns out 
to be nothing less than Madison’s ‘‘ indefinite supremacy.’’ To 
maintain itself it must override whatever opposed it, and the states 
and their authorities if they should do so. 
The practical discovery of this was naturally in applying the 
1 Federalist, No. 31, p. 182. 
? Hamilton’s works, Vol. viii, 518; Sumner’s Hamzlton, p. 230. 
