|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 16
"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." It is
objected that the word "may" imports power, not obligation--a right to
decide--a discretion to grant or refuse.
To this it might be answered that power is duty on many occasions. But
let it be conceded that it is discretionary. What consequence follows?
A power to refuse, in a case like this, does not necessarily involve a
power to exact terms. You must look to the result which is the declared
object of the power. Whether you will arrive at it, or not, may depend
on your will; but you cannot compromise with the result intended and
professed.
What then is the professed result? To admit a State into this Union.
What is that Union? A confederation of States equal in
sovereignty--capable of everything which the Constitution does not
forbid, or authorize Congress to forbid. It is an equal union, between
parties equally sovereign. They were sovereign independently of the
Union. The object of the Union was common protection for the exercise
of already existing sovereignty. The parties gave up a portion of that
sovereignty to insure the remainder. As far as they gave it up by the
common compact they have ceased to be sovereign. The Union provides the
means of defending the residue; and it is into that Union that a new
State is to come. By acceding to it, the new State is placed on the same
footing with the original States. It accedes for the same purpose,
i.e., protection for their unsurrendered sovereignty. If it comes in shorn
of its beams--crippled and disparaged beyond the original States, it is
not into the original Union that it comes. For it is a different sort
of Union. The first was Union _inter pares_. This is a Union between
"_disparates_"--between giants and a dwarf--between power and
feebleness--between full proportioned sovereignties and a miserable
image of power--a thing which that very Union has shrunk and shrivelled
from its just size, instead of preserving it in its true dimensions.
It is into this Union, i. e., the Union of the Federal Constitution,
that you are to admit, or refuse to admit. You can admit into no other.
You cannot make the Union, as to the new State, what it is not as to the
old; for then it is not this Union that you open for the entrance of a
new party. If you make it enter into a new and additional compact, is it
any longer the same Union?
We are told that admitting a State into the Union is a compact. Yes,
but what sort of a compact? A compact that it shall be a member of the
Union, as the Constitution has made it. You cannot new fashion it. You
may make a compact to admit, but when admitted the original compact
prevails. The Union is a compact, with a provision of political power
and agents for the accomplishment of its objects. Vary that compact as
to a new State--give new energy to that political power so as to make it
act with more force upon a new State than upon the old--make the will
of those agents more effectually the arbiter of the fate of a new State
than of the old, and it may be confidently said that the new State has
not entered into this Union, but into another Union. How far the Union
has been varied is another question. But that it has been varied is
clear.
If I am told that by the bill relative to Missouri, you do not legislate
upon a new State, I answer that you do; and I answer further that it is
immaterial whether you do or not. But it is upon Missouri, as a State,
that your terms and conditions are to act. Until Missouri is a State,
the terms and conditions are nothing. You legislate in the shape of
terms and conditions, prospectively--and you so legislate upon it that
when it comes into the Union it is to be bound by a contract degrading
and diminishing its sovereignty--and is to be stripped of rights which
the original parties to the Union did not consent to abandon, and which
that Union (so far as depends upon it) takes under its protection and
guarantee.
Is the right to hold slaves a right which Massachusetts enjoys? If it
is, Massachusetts is under this Union in a different character from
Missouri. The compact of Union for it, is different from the
same compact of Union for Missouri. The power of Congress is
different--everything which depends upon the Union is, in that respect,
different.
But it is immaterial whether you legislate for Missouri as a State or
not. The effect of your legislation is to bring it into the Union with a
portion of its sovereignty taken away.
But it is a State which you are to admit. What is a State in the sense
of the Constitution? It is not a State in the general--but a State as
you find it in the Constitution. A State, generally, is a body politic
or independent political society of men. But the State which you are to
admit must be more or less than this political entity. What must it be?
Ask the constitution. It shows what it means by a State by reference to
the parties to it. It must be such a State as Massachusetts, Virginia,
and the other members of the American confederacy--a State with full
sovereignty except as the constitution restricts it.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|