. The express limitations upon the powers of the Federal Government are in part limitations upon the manner of exercise of powers expressly given, as, for example, that direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective populations, that naturalization, bankruptcy, and tariff laws shall be uniform throughout the United States, etc.; and in part absolute prohibitions upon the exercise, in any manner, of the .powers specified. These absolute prohibitions are to be found, in the main, in Section 9 of Article I and in the first eight Amendments. From the very first it has been construed by the Supreme Court that the prohibitions contained in these Amendments apply only to the United States. This was first authoritatively declared by Marshall in the case of Barron v. Baltimore26 decided in 1833.

26 7 Pet. 243; 8 L. ed. 672.

In his opinion rendered in that case, Marshall said: "The plaintiff . . . insists that the [Fifth] Amendment being in favor of the liberty of the citizen, ought to be so construed as to restrain the legislative power of a State as well as that of the United States. The question thus presented is, we think, of great importance, but not of much difficulty. The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual States. Each State established a Constitution for itself, and in that Constitution, provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed next a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation, and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers to be conferred on the Government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and we think necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself, and not of distinct governments framed by different persons and for different purposes."

The correctness of this decision has never been questioned either by the federal or the state courts. However, as we shall notice in a later chapter, the argument has been made, but not accepted as valid by the Supreme Court, that the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," should be so construed as to render the provisions of the first eight Amendments operative upon the States.

In regard to these first eight Amendments it has sometimes been said that it was only an excess of caution that required their incorporation in the federal Constitution. Inasmuch as the United States was to have only the powers expressly or impliedly given it, it has been asserted that the General Government would have been, in the absence of such express limitations, without the authority to exercise the powers that these Amendments enumerate.27 A consideration, however, of the construction which several of the provisions of these Amendments have received, especially during recent years, will, it is believed, make it evident that these express limitations upon the Federal Government have been of considerable importance.28