regulate her own interests, must be the most cohesive of all associations,—no occasion for disunion being possible. But a liberty so extensive would render impossible any general action; hence the framers of our Constitution approximated to this extreme liberty, as far as practicable, by leaving to the respective States all their sovereignty, except in a few particulars, whose surrender was deemed beneficial to each and all. Indeed, no mathematical proposition can be more certain, than that we diminish the causes of disunion, in proportion as we circumscribe the number of occasions in which the action of the Gener al Government can conflict with local interests. The converse of this rule is equally true; and if our States should unanimously alter the Constitution, giving unlimited sovereignty to the General Government, our local interests, habits, and pursuits are so conflicting, that the Union would soon break into fragments, as all former large empires have broken, whose cohesion has been military force,—a cohesion which alone can hold together even temporarily antagonistic interests that a single legislature attempts to subject to procrustean laws.

§ 4. The construction of our Confederacy is wiser than its framers.

The preservative virtue which, as shown above, is innate in the limited powers of our General Government, was not foreseen by the framers of our National Constitution, wise and patriotic as we delight to deem them. The limitations originated in the accidental division of our country into separate colonies, with separate legislative organizations, and other concomitants of distinct sovereignties. Had our people been united under one government before our separation from Great Britain, the whole, after the attainment of independence, would doubtless have continued united

under some single organization; notwithstanding the lesson of all history, that large consolidated governments, whether monarchical or republican, contain alike the elements of dissolution. Happily, therefore, for us, when our ancestors convened to "form a more perfect union," the discordant interests of our extensive country were already grouped into separate State sovereignties, which could be united under one federal whole only by continuing measurably distinct. Our National Government commenced, therefore, in a separation, just where a consolidated national government would have violently terminated, after some years of smouldering rebellion. The wisdom of no man could have originated the conception of a government limited like ours; and we are yet to learn whether man possesses wisdom enough to endure its limitations. To err in this particular is most easy; for, while the motive for limitations can be seen by only laborious examination, the motives for disregarding their spirit, if not their letter, are as apparent to every member of Congress, and partisan orator, as the blessings which he sees deducible from any measure that will minister to his prejudices, interests, or self-conceit.

§ 5. The limitations of our Constitution are as favorable to personal liberty as to the duration of our Confederacy.

Notwithstanding the world has gazed at our political system for more than sixty years, the vulgar principle of forcibly subjecting one locality to the interests and notions of another, is the only kind of aggregated nationality that is yet practised in Europe; hence the first use which France made of its lately acquired republicanism was to impose the philanthropy of France on its West India colonies, by abolishing therein domestic slavery, irrespective wholly of the wishes and interests of the colonists, who

were thus summarily deprived of self-government. Such an intermeddling with other people's consciences and property, though probably consummated in deference to liberty, is repugnant to the more pervading liberty which results from permitting every community to regulate its own domestic polity,--a liberty which is as precious to a small community as to a larger, and which is surrendered by any, from only physical necessity.

The principle of interference by one community with the local concerns of another, is, however, never limited to domestic slavery. It is practised towards the religious prejudices of Ireland, and accordingly Ireland evinces constant uneasiness to be disconnected from England. The principle of interference, wherever established, obeys no limit, but the sufferance of its victims; hence the repeated insurrections of Poland to be severed from Russia, and the late sanguinary struggle of Hungary to be independent of Austria. These sad results of interference contrast widely with the conduct of Texas, voluntarily relinquishing her distinct nationality, and in the language of a great man, "fighting her way into our Union." And look at California, when lately the steamship Oregon was descried in the bay of San Francisco, and by the continued booming of her cannon gave notice that she brought great news. Immediately multitudes of joyfully-expectant people rushed to the beach, and from every pinnacle floated suddenly the "stars and stripes," for California was admitted into the Union. But let no man suppose, that the bells which were pealed on that occasion, the bonfires which lighted every hill, the public meetings for congratulation, and the general enthusiasm, were produced by considerations that California had become connected with a powerful sovereignty. The enthusiasm arose from a consciousness that California had

herself become sovereign, with only so much subjection to the General Government as California believed was for her advantage.

§6. The limitations of the Constitution exist in its construction more than in its language.

Having shown that the limitations of the Constitution are as favorable to liberty as to the duration of our Confederacy, we gain but little, because the efficiency of the limitations will depend on the rules of construction which we apply to them. This is discoverable in the diversity of opinions which at different times have prevailed on the constitutionality of a National Bank. Captiousness is not the origin of the disagreements, but an inherent diversity of men's feelings, interests, knowledge, and acuteness; hence the principles which are to be used in construing constitutional limitations, are of more practical importance than the words in which the limitations are expressed. All constructions of any instrument are governed by the objects which the construer thinks the instrument was designed to subserve; hence a politician who views the limitations of the Constitution as a remedy against a dissolution of the Confederacy--and consequently as the only means whereby any political good can be permanently accomplished by the Confederacy-will be a strict constructionist of the powers of the Constitution. But the politician who looks. at the limitations as only unreasonable obstructions of the power "to promote the general welfare," will deem the limitations as penalties, to be inflicted only where they must; and he will be a loose constructionist of the powers of the Constitution. John Quincy Adams, a loose constructionist, said, in his first Presidential Message to Congress," while dwelling with pleasing satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions, let us not

be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation, blessed with the largest portion of liberty, must, in proportion to its numbers, be the most powerful nation upon earth; and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to the ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow-men. While foreign nations, less blessed than ourselves with that freedom which is power, are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence, or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence, and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority?"

All that is thus so well and patriotically stated by Mr. Adams is true, but it is totally inapplicable to our Confederacy, which is a nation for only a limited number of purposes, and can continue a nation by only adhering strictly to the limitations; as we may be assured by the present agitations, as well as by several preceding ones, which brought the Confederacy to the verge of dissolution. The power to which Mr. Adams alludes, exists in our States respectively, and their people, who, instead "of slumbering in indolence and folding their arms," have advanced in the career of public improvements, canals, railroads, plank roads, electric telegraphs, steamboat navigation, steamship construction, public education, and all other elements of progress, to a degree which no other people ever witnessed; and to a degree which the National Government could not have attained, had it been legally invested with the attributes of unrestricted sovereignty.*

*For further elucidations on this point, see "The Constitutional Power of Congress over Public Improvements," as discussed hereafter.