To the Editor:
[In response to a letter to the editor from Byron George published on page 4A of the Mesquite Local News on July 30, 2015]
Thomas Jefferson understood the principle of States Rights very well, I quote from a letter to Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, February 2 1816.  “The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.  Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State government with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.  It is dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.  What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun?  The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers unto one body.”

It is well to remember that the people of the states of this republic created the federal government.  The federal government did not create the States.

Eugene M. Hughes
Mesquite