that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but on the other, that this assent and ratification is given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.

"This assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each Statethe authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a national, but a Federal act.

"That it will be a Federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors, the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming an aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people, nor from a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary consent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves."

Mr. MADISON also said: An observation fell from a gentleman on the same side as myself, which deserves to be attended to. "If we be dissatisfied with the National Government, if we should choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence." Here Mr. MADISON expresses his concurrence with the gentleman mentioned, in the declaration, that if the State of Virginia is dissatisfied with the General Government in its practical workings, she can renounce it.

In reference to the Federal Government and its powers and purposes, in the forty-fifth number of the Federalist, this language is used:

"The powers delegated to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain to the State Government are numerous and indefinite."

This, then, is the distinction between the two Governments.

The powers granted to the Federal Government are "few and defined," those reserved to the States are "numerous and indefinite."

"The former [the Federal Government] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, the liberties, and the properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

"I have never believed that a State could nullify, and remain in the Union; but I have always believed that a State might secede when it pleased, provided she would pay her proportion of the public debt; and this right I have considered the best guard to public liberty and to public justice that could be devised, and it ought to have prevented what is now felt in the South-oppression."-NATHANIEL MACON, of North Carolina,

Feb. 9, 1833.

Mr. MACON was regarded as an eminently wise man in the Senate of the United States, of which, for a long time, he was regarded as the father.

ORDINANCE OF SECESSION PASSED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE

OF GEORGIA, JANUARY 19, 1861.

"We, the people of the State of Georgia, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by the people of Georgia in convention, in the year 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was assented to, ratified and adopted, and also acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly ratifying and adopting amendments to the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, rescinded, and abrogated; and we do further declare and ordain, that the Union now subsisting between the State of Georgia and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved, and that this State is in the full possession of those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State."

The people of South Carolina passed the ordinance secession / Dec. 20, 1860, thus leading the way in that great sectional

movement.

MR. MADISON ON SECESSION.

In a letter written in 1833, Mr. MADISON uses the following language: "It surely does not follow from the fact that the States, or rather the people embodied in them, having, as parties to the constitutional compact, no tribunal above them, that in controverted meanings of the compact a minority of the parties can rightfully decide against the majority, still less that a single party can at will withdraw itself altogether from its compact with the rest."

In 1787 he used the following language: "It has been alleged that the confederation, having been formed by unanimous consent, could be dissolved by unanimous consent only. Does this doctrine result from the nature of compacts? Does it arise from any particular stipulation on the articles of confederation? If we consider the Federal Union as analogous to the fundamental compact by which individuals compose our society, and which must, in its theoretic origin at least, have been the unanimous act of the component members, it cannot be said that no dissolution of the compact can be effected without unanimous consent. `A breach of the fundamental principles of the compact by a part of the society would certainly absolve the other part from their obligations to it."

"Whether a State can or cannot secede, and what others may do towards her, or she towards them-these are questions behind the Constitution of the United States, and, if I may say so without inconvenience, far above it. These are questions of political science and not of constitutional construction; questions upon which empires are often dismembered and dynasties overthrown."-Mr. PUGH, in the Senate, Dec. 20, 1860.

"The whole theory of our Government is built upon the expectation that the States will not secede, but that all will continue to be integral parts of the confederacy. If you ask, where is authority under the Constitution for a State to secede? I would ask, where is there any thing in the Constitution to prevent its secession?"-Senator РUGH, Dec. 20, 1860.

"It depends on the State itself whether to retain or to abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will remain a member of the Union. To deny this right, would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded; which is, that the people have in all cases a right to determine how they will be governed.

"The secession of a State from the Union depends on the will of the people of such State. The people alone, as we have already seen, have the power to alter the Constitution."-WILLIAM RAWLE, of Pennsylvania, 1825.

This very able man was offered the office of Attorney-General, by WASHINGTON.

President BUCHANAN, in his annual Message, 1860:

"In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the confederacy is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty jarring and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility, whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this course a Union might be entirely broken up into fragments in a few weeks, which cost our fathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.

"It is not pretended that any clause in the Constitution gives countenance to such a theory. It is altogether founded on inference, not from any language contained in the instrument itself, but from the sovereign character of the several States by which it was ratified. But is it beyond the power of a State, like an individual, to yield a portion of its sovereign rights to secure the remainder? In the language of Madison, who has been called the father of the Constitution, it was formed by the States-that is, by the people in each of the States acting in their highest sovereign capacity; and formed, consequently, by the authority which formed the State Constitutions.

"Nor is the Government of the United States created by the

Constitution less a

Iwithin the spher overnment in the strict sense of the term

of its powers, than the governments created

by the Constitutions of the States are within their several spheres." The whole argument of President BUCHANAN in his annual Message of 1860, is one of the ablest against secession.

"I believe that it contravenes no provision of the Constitution, for one or more of the States to secede from the Union; not by virtue of any power conferred upon them by that instrument, but in consequence of the States never having surrendered it to the General Government: the Constitution declares that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the States respectively, or the people.' I apprehend that it will be admitted that the States may exercise any or all of their reserved powers without a violation of the Constitution. If, then, they have never parted with their right to resume their original sovereignty, when, in their opinion, the Government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted, it is no violation of the Constitution for them to secede. If there is any clause in the Constitution by which they deprived themselves of this right, it has escaped my observation."-Senator HUNTER, of Virginia, Jan. 15, 1861.

This expresses the Southern view, as President BUCHANAN in his message does the Northern.

THE COERCION OF A STATE BY PHYSICAL FORCE.

On the subject of coercion, ALEXANDER HAMILTON said: "It has been observed, to coerce the States is one of the saddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single State; this being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war? Suppose Massachusetts, or any larger State should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those States that are in the same situation. as themselves? What a picture does this idea present to our view? A complying State at war with a non-complying State; Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another; the State collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against its Federal head. Here is a nation at war