Of the other amendments, the tenth had been tacitly assumed from the first year of the Republic; this was that “The 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.” This principle also was surely in no way at variance with the spirit of the original document. It was, indeed, the lever that ensured the great efficacy of the Constitution, so that by its provisions the centrifugal forces were never disturbed by centripetal ones; an equilibrium was effected between the tendencies that made for unity and those that made against it, in such a way that the highest efficiency was ensured to the whole while the fullest encouragement was given to the enterprise and initiative of the parts. In no direction, probably, would an improvement have been possible. More authority concentrated at the head would have impeded general activity, and less would have lost the advantages of concerted action; in neither case would material growth or the reconciliation of conflicting opinions have been possible. Constant compensation of old forces and the quickening of new ones were the secret of this documented power, and yet it was only the complete expression of the spirit of self-direction, which demands unremittingly that the nation as a whole shall conduct itself without encroaching on the freedom of the individual, and that the individual shall be free to go his own ways without interfering with the unfettered policy of the nation.
Under the auspices of this Constitution the country waxed and throve. As early as 1803 its land area was doubled by the accession of Louisiana, which had been ceded by Spain to France, and was now purchased from Napoleon for fifteen million dollars—an event of such far-reaching importance that the people of St. Louis have not inappropriately invited the nations of the earth to participate in a Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In 1845 Texas was taken into the Union, it having broken away from Mexico just previously and constituted itself an independent state. The large region on the Pacific slope known as Oregon came in 1846 to the United States by treaty with England, and when finally, in 1847, after the war with Mexico, New Mexico and California became the spoils of the victor and in 1867 Russia relinquished Alaska, the domain of the country was found to have grown from its original size of 324,000 square miles to one of 3,600,000. The thirteen states had become forty-five, since the newly acquired lands had to be divided. But all this growth brought no alteration in the Constitution, whose spirit of self-direction, rather, had led to this magnificent development, had fortified and secured the country, and inspired it with energy and contentment. The population also has grown under this benevolent Constitution. Millions have flocked hither to seek and to find prosperity on this new and inexhaustible soil. The area has increased tenfold, but the population twenty-fold; and the newcomers have been disciplined in the school of self-direction and educated to the spirit of American citizenship.