that Napoleon has taken charge of these people, it is to be hoped that order will reign in Mexico.'

This brings us to the matter of secession, which is one of the reserved rights of the States, as will be seen by the following preamble and article from the amendments to the Constitution adopted in September 1789:

Preamble. The conventions of a number of States having, at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added; and as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institutions, therefore, Resolved, &c.

Article 10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are ' reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'

We have the opinion of most of the leading men of America in favour of the right of secession. A few extracts from their speeches and writings may be given in the order of date. In the year 1798, Mr. Jefferson drew up sundry resolutions which passed the Kentucky Legislature, among which will be found the following:

Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that this government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the

Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress.

Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States is a compact between the several States, as States, each sovereign State being an integral party to that compact; that, as in other compacts between equal sovereigns who have no common judge, each party has the right to interpret the compact for itself, and is bound by no interpretation but its own; that the general government has no final right, in any of its branches, to interpret the extent of its own powers; that these powers are limited within certain prescribed bounds; and that all acts of the general government, not warranted by its own powers, may properly be nullified by a State within its own boundaries.

The Legislature of Virginia adopted similar resolutions the same year; on their consideration, Mr. Madison from the committee submitted an argument in favour of the doctrines contained in them; he said:

It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded on common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts, that, where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges, in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as the authority, of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The States, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows, of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that, as parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their respective interposition.

Mr. Madison concluded his remarks by predicting the

present state of affairs in America with painful and fearful exactness, drawing a picture of the catastrophe yet to come. These are his words :

If measures can mould Governments, and if an uncontrolled power of construction is surrendered to those who administer them, their progress may be easily foreseen and their end easily foretold. A lover of monarchy who opens the treasures of corruption by distributing emoluments among devoted partisans, may at the same time be approaching his object, and deluding the people with professions of republicanism. He may confound monarchy and republicanism by the art of definition. He may varnish over the dexterity which ambition never fails to display, with the pliancy of language, the seduction of expediency, or the prejudices of the times. And he may come at length to avow that so extensive a territory as that of the United States can only be governed by the energies of monarchy, that it cannot be defended except by standing armies, and that it cannot be united except by consolidation. Measures have already been adopted which may lead to these consequences. They consist:

In fiscal systems and arrangements, which keep an host of commercial and wealthy individuals embodied and obedient to the mandates of the treasury.

In armies and navies, which will, on the one hand, enlist the tendency of man to pay homage to his fellow-creature who can feed or honour him; and on the other, employ the principle of fear by punishing imaginary insurrections, under the pretext of preventive justice.

In swarms of officers, civil and military, who can inculcate political tenets, tending to consolidation and monarchy, both by indulgences and severities, and can act as spies over the free exercise of human reason.

In restraining the freedom of the press, and investing the Executive with legislative, executive, and judicial powers over a numerous body of men.

And, that we may shorten the catalogue, in establishing, by successive precedents, such a mode of construing the Constitution as will rapidly remove every restraint upon Federal

power.

b

Let history be consulted; let the man of experience reflect; nay, let the artificers of monarchy be asked what further material they can need for building up their favourite system.

Massachusetts at a very early day advocated secession. Her representatives in Congress in 1789 threatened to break up the Union that had just been formed, if the Federal Capitol were located on the Potomac, and their opposition was only withdrawn upon condition that the Southern members would vote for the assumption of the old war debt of the individual States.* The Yankees are always sharp in money matters. Again, in 1803, in opposing the purchase of the Louisiana territory, they claimed the right to secede, and their State Legislature actually passed a resolution to dissolve' their connection. with the other States, in the event of a confirmation by the Senate of the treaty with France on that subject. They made a similar difficulty in 1811, upon the erection of the Orleans part of that territory into a State. In 1808 there was a secret plot in Massachusetts, in connection with the other New England States, to withdraw from the Union in consequence of the embargo on all foreign commerce, a retaliatory measure adopted by Congress, against the Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon, and Orders in Council of England. Mr. John Quincy Adams, who had favoured the measure, resigned his seat in the Senate, and communicated to the President

* In the course of the debate on the selection of a site for the Capitol, September 3, 1789, Mr. Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, said: 'In my view on the principle of population, it is far beyond the centre (alluding to the Potomac), for I do not think it just on this subject to take the constitutional computation. Will any gentleman pretend that men who are merely the subjects of property or wealth should be taken into the estimate? that the slaves of the country should be taken into view in determining the centre of the Government? If they were considerate, gentlemen might as well estimate the black cattle of New England.

the feeling of the Legislature and people of his State. In order to preserve the Union, the Embargo Act was repealed and a Non-intercourse Act substituted, which permitted trade to be carried on with all countries other than those of the belligerents. It was afterwards so modified, that commerce could also be conducted with them so soon as their obnoxious measures were removed. Massachusetts, in 1814, again avowed the same principles. The committee of her Legislature, in relation to the war with Great Britain, thus reported :

We believe that this war, so fertile in calamities and so threatening in consequences, has been waged with the worst possible views, and carried on in the worst possible manner: forming a union of wickedness and weakness which defies, for a parallel, the annals of the world. We believe, also, that its worst effects are yet to come; that war upon war, tax upon tax, and exaction upon exaction, must be imposed, until the comforts of the present and hopes of the rising generation are destroyed. An impoverished people will be an enslaved people. An army of 60,000 men, become veteran by the time the war is ended, and may become the instrument, as in former times, of destroying even the forms of liberty. It will be as easy to establish a President for life by their arms, as a President for four years by intrigue. We tremble for the liberties of our country. We think it the duty of the present generation to stand between the next and despotism.

The committee had no doubt of the right of the State to resist the enforcement of all unconstitutional laws. They continued:

The power to regulate commerce is abused when employed to destroy it, and a voluntary abuse of power sanctions the right of resistance as much as a direct and palpable usurpation. The sovereignty of the States was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign, and independent State of Massachusetts is