H. OF R.] Cumberland Road. [FEB. 16, 1829. Mr. T. R. MITCHELL, of South Carolina, then took the floor, and said that the great length of the discussion must have exhausted the patience of the House, and rendered it necessary that he should apologise for the farther tax which he was about to impose upon it. He assured the House that he made the attempt with unfeigned reluctance. I do not speak with the hope of making a convert, [said Mr. M.] for, on a subject so frequently discussed, and so profoundly examined, who has not made up his mind? I do not speak for the sake of exhibition; for talents infinitely superior to mine could give neither novelty nor ornament to a theme so thread: bare. But I speak at the peremptory instance of my constituents, who consider the power involved in the amendment as unconstitutional, and fatal to their liberties; and claim it as their privilege to protest and remonstrate against its exercise by you. In a series of resolutions submitted by their Legislature to this House, at the last session, and sug-ereignty of the States, than this immortal patriot. Had gested by them, you are called on, in the stern and impassioned language of freemen, to retrace your steps; to abandon that which you cannot justly hold; and to relieve their minds from those gloomy forebodings to which the assumption of this power naturally gives rise. In obedience to their will, I shall, therefore, as briefly as possible, pre-appropriate money to make the road, was a fundamental sent their views, the grant of this authority as involving any interest in the land, a second section is subjoined, giving a right of entry on the land to the commissioners appointed by the President to lay out the road. Why grant a right of entry to the commissioners, if she had ceded to the United States either a sovereign jurisdiction over the soil, or an interest of any description in it? The most precarious and limited estate in lands a mere tenancy at will-carries with it a right of entry. We cannot attribute so much ignorance, so much folly, to an assembly so distinguished for its wisdom as the Legislature of Pennsylvania, to suppose, for a moment, that, in one section, she should have ceded an interest in the lands, and in the next she should have granted a right of entry. In further support of this construction of these acts, I offer the political opinions of Mr. Jefferson, who sanctioned the act of Congress. No man was more delicate with regard to the soil, nor more devoted to the sovhe obtained an interest in the soil, from those States, it would have been in opposition to the principles by which he had been elevated to the Chief Magistracy, and for the preservation of which he had sacrificed his seat in the cabinet of President Washington. To go as far as he did, to What, sir, does this amendment propose? Why, that this Government should cede, upon certain conditions, to the States of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, any property which it has on the Cumberland road. And the important question which here suggests itself is, whether this Government has any property in the road? for, if it has not, the amendment will, of course, fail to the ground. If, sir, we have any property in this road, it must be derived from one of two sources: either from the grant of those States, made by acts of their Legislatures, or by a power given to us by the constitution to make roads. Now, sir, if we examine the act of Congress under which this Cumberland road was made, and compare it with the corresponding acts of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, we we will be convinced that it was neither the intention of Congress to obtain, nor the intention of the States to grant, any interest in the road. The act of Congress simply requires the President to adopt the most effectual means to obtain the consent of those States that he should cause the road to be laid out and completed within their respective territories." No cession of sovereignty over the soil, nor proprietary interest in it, was demanded by the Government; the only boon which it sought was simply an authority to make the road within their jurisdictions. A road leading from the Atlantic to the waters of the Mississippi was considered an object of great national importance; it would promote the personal convenience of the people; it would give rise to a profitable commerce between the East and the West; and, above all, it would perpetuate the Union of the States. Congress thought it would be only necessary for them to make the road, as the interests of the States would induce them to keep it in repair. The act of Maryland, in answer to this application, is expressed with the most circumspect precision. It simply authorizes" the President to cause the said road to be laid out, opened, and improved, in such way and manner as, by the before recited act of Congress, is required and directed." Nothing more is here granted to Congress than a bare naked authority to lay out and make the road. The act of Pennsylvania is, if possible, more conclusive to this effect. The title of that act is. "An act authorizing the President to open a road through that part of this State lying between Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, and the Ohio river." The first section authorizes the "President to cause so much of the said road as will be within the State to be opened, so far as it may be necessary the said road should pass through this State." And to prove that Pennsylvania did not consider error, which can be explained only by supposing that his imagination misied his judgment; that, convinced of the necessity of such a communication between the East and the West, and dazzled with its brilliant advantages, he did not examine, with sufficient coolness, the exact tendency of the measure with regard to the constitution. But we have all to deplore this error. It has given rise to a new theory, under which, in a subsequent administration, (that of Mr. Monroe,) millions have been lavished, for no other purpose than to purchase aspiring men, or conciliate adverse sections. Mr. Monroe, afraid to abandon the doctrine that we have no constitutional power to make roads, lest he should disaffect the party by which he had been supported, and, at the same time, anxious to meet the views and promote the interests of his adversaries, took advantage of this error of Mr. Jefferson to establish a new construction on this subject, which is even more dangerous, as it is more insidious, than an open unqualified assertion of the power. Professing the greatest respect for the sovereignty of the States, and the sacredness of their soil, the United States, says he, has no power, under the constitution, to make internal Improvements; I will sanction no act of that kind; but they can appropriate money, in any amount, to such undertakings, provided they be of a national character. Now, this is, in every respect, exceptionable. If we appropriate money to the construction of a road, we certainly should have a control over it; we should have the power to establish toll gates, to keep it in repair, and of inflicting penalties for injuries done to it. Under this construction, those immense surveys of routes of roads and canals have been made, and works of this kind projected, which, if they were undertåken, will cost the people thousands of millions of dollars; and, if not undertaken, will be millions thrown away, in employing our engineers in idle peregrinations from one part of the Union to another, It has been used as an engine of vile and corrupt electioneering. To conciliate a section, the administration has no more to do than to lay off a road or canal in it, and a powerful party is immediately formed in its support. The whole community is benefited by it; those who undertake contracts for executing the work; those who are employed on it has laborers; shopkeepers and farmers who supply them; in fact, it is showering on them so much unexpected gold, which all scramble for, and all get a part of. Finally,if the construction which I have put on these acts of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, be not correct, all language is unintelligible, and laws are not guides, to direct, but false lights, to deceive and confuse us. But admitting that the acts of these States do convey an interest in the lands to the United States, they are invalid, whether you consider them as independent sovereigns, and subject to those laws which are common to all sovereigns, or as members of this confederacy, whose power and rights are created, distributed and defined, by the constitution. Vattel lays it down as a maxim, that no sovereign can transfer any portion of public property, or of the possessions of a community, under its right of eminent domain, but from necessity, or for the public safety. This is, in fact, almost denying the right to part with the eminent domain under any circumstances. For, it can hardly be said that we have a right to do an act, because it may be extorted from us, which we are compelled to do, from the irresistible operation of necessity, or the public safety. In this instance, if the States had conveyed their land to the United States, it would have been merely on a principle of pecuniary advantage, to be relieved from the expense of making a road, from which incalculable benefits were expected to result: and this would not amount to either of the exigencies which, according to Vattel, will justify the transfer. But, considering the States as they ought to be considered, members of the confederacy, the transfer of the land was also invalid. The States are restrained from conveying to the United States any portion of their territory but for two purposes: either as a seat of national legislation, or as sites for forts, arsenals, dock yards, &c. In the first, they are limited by the clause in the quantity to be transferred. They can convey no more than ten miles square. In the second, they are limited by the nature of the objects; as forts, and other works of defence, can occupy but a very small surface. Had the States retained the power to convey their lands to the United States for roads, it surely would not have been necessary to insert this clause, as the transfers of lands, provided for by it, are for purposes of much higher importance, nay, of absolute necessity. They who had an inherent right to convey lands to the United States for commercial roads, would surely have the right, without the authority of the constitution, to convey it for purposes infinitely more important; for national legislation, or the common defence. If the Legislature of a State can convey to the United States one foot of land, for other purposes than those prescribed in the constitution, it can convey the whole of its territory. But is it not monstrous to suppose that the existence of a State should have been left dependent on the will of so small a body as a Legislature? Does this agree with that jealousy of power which the people of this country evinced in the formation and adoption of the constitution? Does it agree with that distrust which they continue to manifest towards their rulers? Or does it agree with that good sense and foresight for which they have ever been distinguished? No principle in politics or morals can be safely adopted which leads directly to an absurdity. It is clear, therefore, that we can find nothing in these to warrant the conclusion that any valid interest in the Cumberland road has been ceded to Congress, by the States of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. If, then, we have any transferable interest in the soil; if we have any property in this road, which we can cede to the States, it must arise out of a general power, delegated to us by the constitution, to make roads. I shall very briefly state the leading arguments in favor of this grant of power, and as briefly state my objections to them. [H. OF R. establish. According to my understanding of it, its meaning is to fix-to make firm-to build." Admitting this to be true, neither of these words conveys the idea of make, when applied to roads. It would not be correct English to say that the United States intend to fix a road, to make firm a road, or to build a road, from Wheeling to Zanesville, when they intend to make a road from one of those places to the other. If a road be too soft and miry, you may make it firm, but there you suppose the road already made: so, you may fix a gate, or build a house on a road; these, also, suppose the road to be in existence. If, therefore, the word establish be synonymus with each of these words, it would not advance the Secretary a peg in his arguments, for neither of them conveys the idea of make. But establish is not synonomous with either of these words; for, if you substitute it for either, the sentence will be nonsense. "He established a house in the city of Washington last summer"-would you suppose me to say that "he had built a house there ?" He filled up that quagmire with stones, and established it-would you understand me to say he had made it firm? Or that picture is established to, or on, the wall-could I mean that the picture was fixed to the wall? For the above definition of the word establish, Mr. Clay quotes the Dictionaries. But they are surely not the highest authorities for the signification of words. Classical and scientific writers, and ordinary conversation, are the only sources from which we can learn their true meaning and application. To them, the writers of Dictionaries have to resort, for the definitions which they give. But supposing, in strictness, these words mean the same, they are not so used in the common intercourse of life; such an application of them would not be understood by nine-tenths of mankind. Make is the word which the most established authorities have adopted in such case. It cannot be supposed that the framers of our constitution, who were masters of the language, would use any word in an obselete, quaint, or far-fetched sense, in an instrument which was intended to be read and understood by men of all classes, capacities, and degrees of information. Nor can it be supposed that they would have delegated a great power to Congress, but in language which could not be misunderstood. Critics have said that our constitution contains more pure English than any other composition of the same extent, in the whole sweep of American and English literature. I am persuaded that the Secretary would not have hazarded such an application of the word establish, as the above, either in his diplomatic correspondence, or in those splendid addresses with which he dazzled the House of Representatives. Now, sir, give the word establish its true meaning, which is to designate, to adopt-and the difficulty vanishes, Entrusted with the Post Office Department, Congress has the right to use the roads of the States, and to select those which will best suit its purpose. This was all the power or control over roads which was intended to be granted by this clause to that body. Would the Convention, that assembly of sages and patriots, have delegated a power which could never be exercised; which from its very nature, must have been wholly useless? Why, sir, if the Cumberland road, one hundred and thirty miles long, has cost two millions two hundred thousand dollars, what amount of money would it require to make one hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred and five miles of road, over which the mail is now carried? I cannot enumerate the result. These details were, of course, unknown to them; but they knew the boundless extent of our country; its rapidly increasing population; the importance of diffusing information by mail; that this mail must pervade every part of the Union, extended as it might be; and that, to be extensively useful, postage must be so low as to do no more than pay the expense of transportation. Such a grant of power could never have entered into the minds of men barely sane, much less of men so distinguished for wisdom. Others, who have contended for our right to make roads, have considered it not as expressly delegated, but as implied; some deriving it from our power to regulate commerce among the several States, others from our power to declare war; and a few, happily for the country a very few, from our power to lay and collect taxes to provide for the common defence and general welfare. I shall very briefly touch on these several implications, as I know that your patience is exhausted. Now, it is said that our power to regulate commerce among the several States carries with it the power to make commercial roads. To regulate commerce can signify nothing more than to make rules for its government. The phrase cannot be extended to the supply of the means by which it may be facilitated or increased. We might as well say that, under this power, we were authorized to furnish ships in the foreign, and wagons in the home trade, for the carriage of merchandise. Good roads cheapen the article to the consumer, and if Government furnished wagons, the merchant could not charge his customer with the expense of transportation. They would produce the same effect on the price of the commodity. And if the facilities and advantages which good roads give to our internal commerce authorized us to make them, similar facilities and advantages would authorize us to furnish the means of transportation. Unless, therefore, it can be shown that the word regulate is synonymous with facilitate or increase, this position cannot be maintained. This, however, will appear more evident, when we ascertain the meaning of the terms 66 implied power," as used in the constitution, We have in that instrument two explanations of these terms, both arriving at the same result; one in the last clause of this section (1st Art. 8th Sec.), authorizing us to make "all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers," whereby an implied power must be necessary to the execution of the expressed power; and one to be derived from the relation which exists between the expressed powers, whereby it is manifest that a power which has merely an affinity | to an expressed power cannot be implied, but it must be expressly granted; and it will be shown that the power to make roads has no more than an affinity to the power of regulating commerce. Now, when may one power be said to be necessary to another, according to the clause of the constitution cited above? When there is an inseparable connection between them? When the one cannot be executed without the other? I will endeavor to illustrate this. The power to lay and collect taxes carries with it the power of appointing tax gatherers: for, without them, or agents of the kind, the power of laying taxes would be completely ineffectual: so, the power of appointing tax gatherers would be nugatory, without the power of laying taxes; these are mutually dependent, and inseparable from each other. Again the power to establish post offices and post roads carries with it the power to apppoint postmasters. There is the same relation here as in the former case. Now, is there this inseparable connection between the power to regulate commerce among the several States, and the power to make roads? Can we not imagine them apart? Cannot a power to regulate commerce exist without the power to make roads? Has not this been the practice in our country ever since the establishment of this constitution? Has not the Federal Government regulated commerce, while the States have made roads for its transportation? Again: what is the natural order of things? Roads must be made from one community to another, before commerce can exist between them; and commerce must always precede the exercise of the power to regulate it. Finally, is not the doubt which exists in this House, of its being an implied power, proof positive that it is not? For, if there was a necessary connection between them, it would strike the mind with the force of an axiom. Who ever doubted [FEB 16, 1829. that our power" to provide and maintain a navy" implied the power to create admirals? Who ever doubted that our power to regulate commerce with foreign nations implied the power to establish custom houses, create collectors, and build and equip revenue cutters? Wherever one power is necessary to another, the association between them is so close in the mind, that each suggests the other; it requires no train of reasoning to prove the connection. That there is an affinity between these two powers cannot be denied; but an affinity as close, if not closer, exists between all the expressly delegated powers. The powers to provide and maintain a navy; to declare war; to establish post offices and post roads; to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy; to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court; to coin money; each and every one of these has as close an affinity to the regulation of commerce as the power to make roads. Why, then, was not the power to make roads expressly granted? If powers having a closer affinity to each other have been expressly granted, and the power to make roads is not, the inference is irresistible, that it was not the intention of the framers of the constitution to grant it. Why should an express power be necessary to provide and maintain a navy, when it is all-important to the protection of commerce; while the power to make roads, by no means so essential, may be exercised by bare inference or implication? Is not the power to make roads a right of sovereignty? Is not the exercise of many other sovereign powers necessary to the execution of it? Can you make roads without laying taxes; without compelling the citizens to part with their soil against their will? Does it not involve the pow er to establish tolls and toll gates, and the power to prescribe and enforce penalties for injuries committed? What exercise of sovereignty is more plenary than this? Whether, therefore, we consider the importance of this power to make roads, or its relation to that of regulating commerce, we must conclude that it cannot be considered an implied power; and as it was not expressly granted, it cannot be exercised. Again: It is said that the power to declare war implies the power to make military roads. The power to make roads having no more than a bare affinity to the war pow er, all the above reasoning applies to it with equal force. But there are other reasons applying to this particular power, which go still further to confirm and strengthen my conclusion. If the convention had formed our Govern ment for a nation of barbarians, inhabiting an unbroken forest, where the traveller regulated his course from one point to another by the sun in the day, and by the stars at night; a nation so rude and uncivilized that no reasoning could convince them of the benefit of making roads, it might have been necessary that the right should have been reserved to Congress. But so far from this, the constitution was formed for the government of thirteen sovereignties, each of which not only had the power to make roads, but had actually made them wherever they were necessary. The sovereignties were inhabited by an enlightened, sagacious, enterprising, and commercial people, devoted to their interest, and fertile in devising the best means to obtain it; who could, under no possibility, have been so blind as to be without roads for every military and commercial purpose. Again: They had just emerged from the Revolutionary war; two armies had traversed the United States in all directions; at one time we see them arrayed against each other at Boston, at another time at Saratoga, then at Long Island, and last of all at Yorktown. Does it appear that there ever was any want of military roads? When the immortal Washington, crossing the Delaware, in a freezing night of December, made that rapid and brilliant movement on Princeton and Trenton, by which he covered his standard with glory, and revived the spirits of a desponding country, did he not find FEB. 16, 1829.] Cumberland Road. [H. OF R. which the most cruel and extortionate tyranny can inflict Did Tiberius ever issue an edict which was not for the general welfare? Did not Henry justify the massacre of St. Bartholomews by the general welfare? During the late revolution, when the city of Paris, nay, the whole territory of France, floated with the blood of her butchered people, was it not for the general welfare? Even the Dey of Algiers, that ruffian despot, when he orders an innocent victim to the bow-string, will tell you that it is for the general welfare. military roads to accomplish his high design? With these events fresh in their minds, and with the above facts before their eyes, could the convention have thought it necessary to delegate this power to the General Government ? We know that that illustrious assembly delegated power to this Government with the utmost caution, and with the most fastidious jealousy. No more was granted than what was absolutely necessary. Many of its most enlightened and fervently patriotic members contemplated the Federal Government, when it was barely sketched out, and before it was filled up and burnished off, with the most dismal And yet the Congress of the United States, notwithforebodings. They viewed it as a monster, which would standing all the pains and labors of our ancestors to bind not only devour up the State sovereignties, but trample it to a circumscribed sphere of action, is loosed by this under its enormous hoofs the liberties of the people. God construction from its fastenings, and its power limited by grant that their gloomy apprehensions may not be realiz- what, after all which has been said, can only be resolved ed! God grant that we, or those immediately after us, into the will of its members. But it was to guard the may not, amid the wreck of the noblest institutions, have People against the blindness, the imbecility, and corrupcause to weep over those calamities which their prophetic tion of this will, that the constitution was formed; that spirits foresaw! They were willing to suffer all the evils the sovereign power was distributed and defined; that the of the old confederation: its feebleness, its pecuniary em- great principle of responsibility was grafted into it. Let barrassments, its commercial difficulties, and heart-burn- us imagine a case perfectly consistent with this construcing jealousies, rather than expose that liberty, which they tion, and not inconsistent with the present state of things. had achieved by toil and blood, to the deadly grasp of a We might deem it to be for the general welfare to purdespotism of their own creation. chase Cuba from Spain, and some plausable reasons might be assigned for it. Cuba is only a biscuit's throw from Florida; it commands the passage which our vessels use in going to and from New Orleans. But, having purchased it, it might not be for the general welfare to admit it into the Union, but that it should remain what we call a territory, what the Romans called a province, and the modern Europeans a colony. It might be for the general welfare to impose on its wretched inhabitants a government as cruel and extortionate as that under which Sicily and Syracuse groaned in the time of the infamous Verres. We might arm our territorial governor with all the power of a Roman quæstor or proconsul, and abandoning the old principle of taxation and representation, adopt the more summary and vigorous process of arbitrary assessment. All this might easily be effected under this construction: for, admit the right to purchase, and yon may govern the island as you please. A keen and thrifty administration, skilled in the art of direct and indirect taxation, and in the still nobler art of compulsory contribution, might raise from that rich country a revenue little short of that of the United States. "As we the people of the United States" would not feel it, what would hinder you from appropriating it to yourselves? Your Committee of Retrenchment might, in such case, increase its fame, and your own popularity, by reducing your per diem to a nominal sum; by allowing you no more than what would pay for your soda water. But with such an income, would it be difficult to convert you from a biennial into a septennial, or an assembly for life? With money enough, what would prevent your continual reelections. And when I say so, I do not mean to charge my countrymen with even ordinary corruption. No, sir. Before my God, I believe them to be the most virtuous people on earth. But money is moral power, equal in effect to military force. Suit the pill to the palate, and any man many be bought; bought, sir, without his dreaming it. He may be a sold slave, while he believes himself to be a free man, actuated by the noblest principles. Need we go out of this hall for illustrations of this truth? I come now to the last source from which this power to make roads is derived, and that is the clause which authorizes us to lay and collect taxes to provide for the eommon defence and general welfare. And here I must again quote Mr. Clay. It is well known that this eminent man has built his popularity very much on what he erroneously calls the American System, and that, on the floor of this hall, he was unquestionably the most zealous and able champion of Internal Improvement. His glowing descriptions of grandeur and prosperity, arising out of the exercise of this power, dazzled the public mind; and the people, confounded by the crowd of cities, the mighty results of commerce and manufactures, and the beautiful landscapes of agriculture, which his imagination presented, have forgotten that they were abandoning a real power for a delusive picture-a power, the exercise of which, by this Government, will shake this Union to its basis-for a dream, a phantasm, the creation of a poet's brain. Yet, notwithstanding his enthusiasm and devotion to Internal Improvements, he peremptorily disclaims that construction of this clause which would warrant us in making roads and canals. He says that such a construction "would convert a cautiously limited Government into one without limitation.' I quote him with pleasure, because the admissions of an enemy frequently are of more avail than the most profound reasoning of a friend. When the great advocate of Internal Improvements avers that a construction which goes to support his favorite theory is false and dangerous, who will doubt the correctness of his conclusions ? But there is a set of politicians in this country, few in number, and daily declining in public estimation, who give to this construction the broadest latitude. They boldly tell you that Congress has an unlimited power to tax, and an unlimited power to appropriate to any object which may be for the general welfare, without regard to the express grants of power, provided those objects may be effected or attained by money. And, under this construction, the greatest, most expensive, and chimerical works of Internal Improvement have been supported and justified; works which will involve the United States in the expenditure of countless millions, the greatest portion of which will be paid from that revenue which the produce of the South pours into the Treasury. If what we deem to be for the general welfare is the limit of appropriations, I ask where that limit is? Is it not like the horizon, always before us, and never to be arrived at? What, sir, is the general welfare? Just what you please to have it; any thing which the most capricious imagination can conceive; any thing which the most profligate ambition can devise; any thing When once a government swings from the moorings of the constitution, no one can say where it will stop. It may become the most absolute despotism, and retain all its republican forms. Look at that country, whose language we speak, from which we are descended, (not me, sir,) and with which we must forever be in contact as friend or foe. See the exemplification of this truth in her House of Commons. That body was created to represent the people, to protect their rights, and to oppose the prerogatives of the crown. In the revolution of 1638, not very much more than a century ago, it was reformed and restored to its primitive purity. What is it now? The representative of the people? No, sir. It is the representative of the crown. The king and his minsters command a majority in it. Is it a shield against the encroachment of royal prerogative? The very reverse of this; the engine by which arbitrary power may be exerted with impunity, and with all the sanctions of law. And yet, sir, it is, in name and exterior form, what it has ever been. But oh! how different in reality. A seat in that assembly, which was the voluntary gift of the people, the reward of virtue and talent, is now obtained by the most vicious corruption or an article of open merchandise, as much as the coal of Cornwall, or the tea of the India company; and that which was intended to represent intellectual beings, now represents decayed and untenanted houses. And whence did this arise? From free construction, aided by money. A borough was a trading town, and it was allowed a member to represent its commercial interests. But, although its inhabitants have abandoned it, its commerce is no more, and instead of being owned by many, who had peculiar rights to be protected, and also a community of interest with the people at large, is now owned by a single individual, whose situation sets him at an eternal distance from the people. It is still a borough; it still sends its member; not elected by a part of the people of England, but nominated and appointed by the owner of the soil, and this member has, on the floor, all the political rights and privileges with the representatives of the great city of London, or the county of Norfolk. Yes, sir. This was effected by free construction; by an application of the doctrine, which I am contending against, to that government; by a perversion of magna charta, as fatal as that which is now sapping the vitals of our constitution, and making it any and every thing. The present advocates of this doctrine have, however, no claim to originality. Imitatorum servile pecus, they follow their bell-wether Alexander Hamilton. It is well known that this mistaken but highly gifted man (perhaps more highly gifted, as to mere intellect, than any of his contemporaries) was secretly and at heart a friend to monarchy. He exerted himself in the convention to give all the strength and energy which he could to the Federal head. He afterwards espoused the cause of the constitution, and was, in truth, greatly instrumental in effecting its adoption; not because he approved it, but because it was the strongest government which could go down. He labored, in the Federalist, to excite jealousies against the States, and wrote paper after paper, with great force and eloquence, "to show the tendency of federal goveruments to anarchy among the members, rather than tyranny in the head" and, by this means, to inspire the people with unlimited and uninquiring confidence in the General Government. And as soon as he became a member of Washington's cabinet, he adopted this free construction-this general welfare doctrine, as one by which he might enlarge the powers of the General Government to an unlimited extent; supply what was deficient; and, against the will of the people, and without their knowledge, saddle them with a monarchy, under the form of a republic. To prove that I do not misrepresent him, permit me to quote two short passages from the resolutions of the Virginia House of Delegates, passed in 1798, one of which contains his theory, and the other (the commentary of the delegates) the direct operation and effect of that theory. It is contended by Mr. Hamilton: "To belong to the discretion of the National Legislature to pronounce upon the subjects which concern the general welfare, and for which, under that description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper. And there seems to be no room for a doubt, that, whatever concerns the general interests of learning, of agriculture, [FEB. 16, 1829. of manufactures, and of commerce, are within the sphere of the National Councils, as far as regards an application of money." man. Now, this gives us jurisdiction over all the concerns of His individual industry, no matter how employed, whether in agriculture or manufactures, is subject to our regulation; and this paternal authority is extended even to our youth, whose education we have an equal power to control and direct. Does not this carry the legislation of Congress into the work shop and the farm yard; into the school and the warehouse? Does it not strip every federal feature from the Government? What is wanting to make it as national as that of England? Does it not sanction tariffs, internal improvements, a national university, &c ? What is left to the States? But hear the commentary on this opinion by the immortal patriots who composed the House of Delegates of Virginia in 1798: "Now, whether the phrases in question be construed, to authorize every measure relating to the common defence and general welfare, as contended by some, or every measure only in which there might be an application of money, as suggested by the candor of others, the effect must be substantially the same, in destroying the import and force of the particular enumeration of powers which follow these general phrases in the constitution: for it is evident that there is not a single power whatever, which may not have some reference to the common defence and general welfare; nor a power of any magnitude, which, in its exercise, does not involve or admit an application of money. The government, therefore, which possesses power in either one or the other of these extents, is a government without the limitations formed by a particular enumeration of powers; and, consequently, the meaning and effect of this particular enumeration is destroyed by the exposition given of these general phrases." Now, sir, according to this, in order to give our Government absolute and indefinite powers, you have only to adopt the above rule of construction. With whatever unconcern or apathy you may regard it, the people, in 1798, were so alive to its pernicious tendency, that they withdrew their support from the then administration, and formed that party, headed by Mr. Jefferson, which achieved the glorious revolution of 1801. This was the distinetion-the sole distinction-between the federalists and republicans. And does not the same distinction exist now among the members on this floor? If a free construction of the constitution, which gives this government all power, and annihilates the State sovereignties, constituted a federalist in 1798, why should it not constitute a federalist in 1829? Will the simple assumption of the name republican cure this radical defect? Names are not substances; they do not alter the nature of things. A man may profess what he pleases; he may call himself democrat or republican; but, as long as he adopts and maintains this heresy of Alexander Hamilton, he is a federalist, and can be considered in no other light. Sir, if a Turk were to shave his beard, throw off his turban and his trowsers, adopt our costume, and join a Christian church, would you call him Christian, when you knew that he still made the Alcoran the guide of his conduct; that he looked forward to a paradise of voluptuous enjoyment; and, that his creed was, "there is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet!" I know it has been said, here and elsewhere, that it is invidious and ill-natured to expose to view these old distinctions, which have long since ceased to exist. If this were the fact, the observation would be correct. But there is not a single constitutional measure, from the time of Mr. Jefferson down-there is not a single congressional argument upon it-which does not demonstrate that this party, so far from having ceased to, exist, is now full of life, energy, and enterprise, and unceasing in its exer |