Constitution, touching the power here proposed to be usurped. If ever there was a time, in which the ingenuity of the greatest men of an age was taxed to find arguments in favor of and against any political measure, it was at the time of the adoption of this Constitution. All the faculties of the human mind were, on the one side and the other, put upon their utmost stretch, to find the real and imaginary blessings or evils likely to result from the proposed measure. Now I call upon the advocates of this bill to point out, in all the debates of that period, in any one publication, in any one newspaper of those times, a single intimation, by friend or foe to the Constitution, approving or censuring it for containing the power, here proposed to be usurped, or a single suggestion that it might be extended to such an object as is now proposed. I do not say that no such suggestion was ever made. But this I will say, that I do not believe there is such an one anywhere to be found. Certain I am, I have never been able to meet the shadow of such a suggestion, and I have made no inconsiderable research upon the point. Such may exist - but until it be produced, we have a right to reason as though it had no existence." "But there is an argument, stronger even than all those which have been produced, to be drawn from the nature of the power here proposed to be exercised. Is it possible that such a power, if it had been intended to be given by the people, should be left dependent upon the effect of general expressions; and such, too, as were obviously applicable to another subject; to a particular exigency contemplated at the time? Sir, what is this power we propose now to usurp? Nothing less than a power changing all the proportion of the weight and influence possessed by the potent sovereignties composing this Union. A stranger is to be introduced to an equal share, without their consent. Upon a principle, pretended to be deduced from the Constitution, this Government, after this bill passes, may and will multiply foreign partners in power, at its own mere motion; at its irresponsible pleasure; in other words, as local interests, party passions, or ambitious views may suggest. It is a power, that, from its nature, never could be delegated; never was delegated; and as it breaks down all the proportions of power guarantied by the Constitution to the States, upon which their essential security depends, utterly annihilates the moral force of this political contract." In the year 1832, Mr. John Quincy Adams addressed a letter to Mr. Speaker Stevenson, which was published in the National Intelligencer. Some portions of it relate particularly to this subject. Brief paragraphs follow: — "Had I been present, I should have voted in favor of the ratification. I had no doubt of the power to conclude the treaty. I did vote and speak in favor of the bill making appropriations for carrying the treaties into execution. "But I voted against the bill 'to enable the President of the United States to take possession of the territories ceded by France to the United States, by the treaty concluded at Paris on the 30th April last, and for the temporary government thereof. (See Biorens's United States Laws, Vol. III. p. 562, both those Acts.) My speech on the bill authorizing the creation of the stock, may be found in the Fourth Volume of Elliot's Debates and Illustrations of the Federal Constitution, p. 258; and it points out the distinction upon which I voted for one of those bills, and against the others. "I believed an amendment of the Constitution indispensably necessary to legalize the transaction; and I further believed the free and formal suffrages of the people of Louisiana themselves were as necessary for their annexation to the Union, as those of the people of the United States. I made a draft of an article of amendment to the Constitution, authorizing Congress to annex to the Union the inhabitants of any purchased territory; and of a joint resolution directing that the people of Louisiana might meet in primary assemblies, and vote upon the question of their own union with the United States. Of both these experiments, had Mr. Jefferson had the courage to make them, the result was as certain as the diurnal movement of the sun. But Mr. Jefferson did not dare to make them. He found Congress mounted to the pitch of passing those acts, without inquiring where they acquired their authority; and he conquered his own scruples as they had done with theirs. "The administration, and its friends in Congress, had determined to assume and exercise all the powers of government in Louisiana, and all the powers for annexing it to the Union, without asking questions about their authority... "A letter from Mr. Jefferson to Dr. Sibley has been recently published, written June, 1803, after he had received the Louisiana treaties, in which he clearly and unequivocally expresses the opinion that an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary in order to carry them into full execution. Yet, without any such amendment to the Constitution, Mr. Jefferson did, as President of the United States, sign all those acts for the government and taxation of the people of Louisiana, and did exercise all the powers vested in him by them." And last, though not least, Mr. Webster's opinion that the true construction of the Constitution did not authorize the admission of States formed from foreign territory, is clearly expressed in his speech on the exclusion of slavery from the territories; and, I think, in others of his speeches. I claim thus to have shown you; - by the course of the debates at the time the Constitution was formed, and afterwards; - by argument; — and by the opinions of eminent men; that the original and true construction of the clause contained in it, giving power for the admission of new States, did not authorize the admission of States formed from foreign territory; and that Louisiana, therefore, was admitted by an act of sovereign power, under color of the Constitution, but not in pursuance of its provisions. But she is in the Union, and I trust will long remain there. She cannot be put out, nor go out, except by a great political convulsion. Congress could admit, as we see, because Congress did admit; but Congress does some other things without a constitutional warrant. That admission, like those other things, once done, cannot be recalled; and, therefore, as to the fact of admission itself, it is the same as if a constitutional authority existed. And so of other States admitted since, and coming within the principle. But it is by no means true that all the results should follow, the same as if the admission were constitutional. The admission is to be judged of by itself, and not by the constitutional rules which it has violated. Suppose, instead of the conclusion that Louisiana was admitted by an act of sovereign power, it should be conceded that she was admitted, not without constitutional warrant, but by virtue of a construction of the third section of the fourth article. That is shown not to have been the original meaning nor the original construction, and therefore not the true construction; and such new construction of that article does not enlarge the compromise provision in relation to the representation. The States thus admitted are admitted on such terms as Congress shall prescribe under the new construction, so those terms do not violate the equal rights of others; and especially the equal right of representation, to which the other States of the Union are entitled, except so far as equality has been surrendered by the true construction of the clause respecting representation. In other words, the enlargement of the clause respecting admission, by construction, and not by the act of the people, does not enlarge the compromise in the clause of representation, nor the application of that clause to cases for which it was not intended. But it may be said that Louisiana and other new States are entitled to the advantage of this slave representation by virtue of their acts of admission, (that of Louisiana providing, that the State "shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.") In fact a doctrine has recently been broadly asserted which goes still farther, and denies that Congress has a right to attach an exclusion of slavery to the admission of a State; alleging that if Congress admits a State, it must be admitted on an equal footing with other States, and that the whole question of slavery, so far as the States are concerned, is a local question and the subject of purely local law. It was said in the Convention at Boston: -- -- "The government of the United States has no power either to make or to unmake State Constitutions. Gentlemen seem to forget that the government of the United States is a government with limited and defined powers and that this whole question of slavery is, so far as the States are concerned, a local question and the subject of purely local law. If Congress admit a State at all, it must admit it on an equal footing with the other States. The power of Congress to admit a State is the power to admit just such States as the existing States are. The power to admit at all is acquired from an explicit provision of the Constitution, and the word State in that provision means, and can only mean, just what the word State means wherever it occurs in the same instrument. "To admit a community which should not possess the same degree of sovereignty as is possessed by the people of the existing States, would not be to admit a State - it would be the admission of something else than a State. But Congress may refuse to admit. Of course she may. And these logicians without logic say if she may refuse to admit she may surely admit with conditions. Now, sir, certainly with some conditions - but those conditions must be in regard to subjects concerning which the Constitution shall have conferred upon Congress power in reference to the existing States of the Union." Upon this I remark, first, that the opinion of Mr. Webster, to whose opinions the speaker has been supposed heretofore to have paid some deference, is distinctly shown to have been the other way in his speech on the admission of Texas, in 1845; in that on the exclusion of slavery, in 1848; and in other speeches. He could have had no doubt that a condition annexed, that slavery should be excluded, would be valid. But I will not rely upon authority alone to controvert this proposition. The deed of cession by Virginia of the territory northwest |