were ever sent therewith the deliberate de-
sign of establishing a common agent that
would have the right of compelling Mary-
land, by force of arms, by the display of
military power, to adopt any construction of
her own rights somebody else might put upon
them? Do you suppose it ever entered into
the contemplation of the men who formed
the Constitution of the United States that a
time would ever come when the States most
populous would rule the States less populous ?
Did they ever suppose that in creating the
Federal Government they were establishing a
means, an agency, through and by which
Massachusetts should ever tie the hands and
feet of Maryland? Did it ever enter into their
contemplation that by the adoption of that
system they were constituting a power
through which the last, newest, rotten-bor-
ough State created by the newest, sickliest,
meanest, dirtiest partizanship in Congress,
the last of those humbug States, the last fruit
of that policy of bringing States into the
Union for the sake of mere political power
in the Senate, a policy which is at the foun-
dation of all our political troubles? Did the
framers of the Constitution in 1787 ever con-
ceive that in establishing this beneficent Gov-
ernment they were creating an agency
through which, in a constitutional method,
sustained by all the appliances of law, the
State of Idaho, or the State of Montana, or
some other State then unbeard of and un-
known, was to have the right to march her
armies into the very heart of Virginia, the
mother of States? Was that designed to be
allowed? Was that the object, was that
the intention of the framers of the Consti-
tution ?
I may as well say in one sentence all I de-
sign to say concerning this question of the
right of secession, of revolution and all that.
That is all irrelevant. That issue is under
the arbitrament of the sword; there I would
not disturb it; there I would not have it go,
but there let it be decided. But I will state,
what it is fair I should state, in order to vin-
dicate to the Convention my personal ideas
upon this subject. It makes little difference
whether this is called revolution among States,
or rebellion, or anything else. but there is
one consideration which, in my enquiries upon
this subject, has always been conclusive to my
mind, as controlling in the last resort the
relative political powers of the Federal Gov-
ernment and of the States, It is this: I hold
that no man, who is acquainted with the con-
dition of those colonies before the idea of a
Union was broached; who is acquainted with
the debates in the Convention which formed
the Constitution; who knows the spirit of
liberty which these men breathed; who
knows the circumstances of difficulty and dis-
agreement under which the Constitution was
finally adopted in most of the States, can
doubt for a moment that if at that day any- |
body had avowed by authority the doctrine
that the federal agency which was then es-
tablished was to have the right by the display
and exercise of military power to coerce the
States to its will—no man can doubt what
would have been the result. That man is a
madman who would say that under those
circumstances the Constitution of the United
States would ever have been adopted.
And those men, strong as they all were in
their devotion to their respective States; hold-
ing as they all did that their allegiance was
due, as undeniably it was at that time, to the
States only; when a majority of them in fact
did not want any change at all, and the Con-
stitution was adopted with difficulty; when
Luther Martin, in this very hall, rendering
his account of the action of the representa-
tives of Maryland, and assuming the strictest
States' rights theory of the Constitution,
said: "If you adopt this Constitution, you
are forging chains under which your poster-
ity will swelter," thus opposing the Constitution
even with the mildest construction,
did they believe in this theory of consolida-
tion and coercion? Is it reasonable, can any
believe, can any man this day tell me that he
believes that the people who were contempo-
raneous with the Constitution of 1787, when
they so zealously guarded all States' rights ;
when they made Delaware practically the
equal of New York, Maryland the equal of
Pennsylvania; when they put the federative
system into the senate, into the judiciary, into
the executive; when they hedged in State
rights in every way that political rights can
be secured to any people—will any man tell
me that he believes that it was the intention
of those men in the establishment of this
federal agency, to place the States completely
in the power of the agent they erected? Or
to go farther than I have yet gone; did they
intend that those States which in the progress
of events should become densely populated
should assume the control of the General
Government, and have the right, through this
force construction of its powers to oppress,
and subjugate and control the action of smaller
and less populous States? Would Virginia
ever have acceded to the Constitution if she
had supposed that in the due course of opera-
tion of law under that Constitution, Massa-
chusetts was to dictate constitutional laws
to Virginia? Would Maryland ever have
adopted it, had she supposed that New York
with her weight of population was to over-
throw and blot out Maryland from the map ?
Why, sir, the idea is preposterous.
And this is the one single controlling con-
sideration which always led my mind to the
conviction, as firm as adamant, that it is non-
sense to say that when you come to the last
resort, and it is a question of conflict of power
between the States and the confederation, the
States are not to be the final judges. It
wants no constitutional right; it arises from |
