AND 1827. REPORT no part of it, any grant of power to promote any branch of internal RESOLUTIONS. industry, or any of the useful arts, by any other means than by the conferring of patent rights for new inventions. That the convention designedly withheld such a general power, abundantly appears from the journals of that body, already referred to. Two distinct propositions were at different periods made to amend the reported draft of the Constitution, by conferring on Congress, the power in question, but these propositions, together with others in relation to science and agriculture were not adopted; the convention finally coming to the conclusion, that Congress should "promote the progress of science and the useful arts BY securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." A clause this, so exclusive in its mode of expression, as to leave no doubt in the minds of your committee, that all other modes of encouraging the useful arts, excepting by patents, were to be prohibited. This view coincides with, and is considerably enforced by a power reserved to the States "to lay imposts," with the consent of Congress, for other purposes than the execution of their inspection laws; a clause which, in the opinion of your committee, is not susceptible of any other explanation, than as a provision, to enable such State as might be desirous of protecting their domestic manufactures against foreign rivalry, to do so, by imposing in their own ports, imposts on the imported fabrics, with the consent of Congress. By referring to the secret debates of the Convention, it clearly appears that the insertion of this clause was for this purpose alone. In addition, it may be urged that no interest can be recognized as a general interest within the meaning of the Constitution, which EACH State does not possess, in COMMON with EVERY OTHER State. The design of union amongst the States was, not that Congress should Legislate in cases to which the States were separately competent, but simply ' regulate such general concerns, as would have suffered by the exercise of individual or State Legislation. Among these general concerns, which the States were incompetent to regulate with any advantage, the most prominent was COMMERCE. To the necessity of a controuling power to regulate foreign trade, and to no other motive, does the Constitution OWE ITS EXISTENCE. This power, the old Congress did not possess. The States had repeatedly refused to grant such a power, because each State thought itself competent to regulate its own trade. But the experience of the first four years which succeeded the war of the revolution, having taught them their error, the people afterwards intreated their local assemblies to grant such a power to the common head of the confederacy. In the mean time, propositions were made for a Convention to frame a new Constitution. Thus it is plain, that it was not until the States were reminded by their own dear-bought experience, that Commerce was a general interest, that they were disposed to unite forever, for this, so great and so common a blessing to them all. The Convention having been convened to form a Constitution, it adopted as the basis upon which were to be built the powers of the new government, the PRINCIPLE that all such interests as the States could not separately manage, should be transferred to the Federal Head. It is to be observed, that neither in the old nor in the new compact, is there a single subject specified for the Legislation of the General Council, in which EVERY State has not an immediate and a very important interest. All the enumerated powers in these two memorable instruments, are referable to WAR, PEACE, INDIAN TRADE, REPORT AND 1827. COMMERCE and FOREIGN NEGOTIATION. The present Constitution was designed to supply all the deficiencies of the Confederation, and by an RESOLUTIONS. unanimous vote of the Convention, it was early decided, as appears by its journals, that the enumerated powers of the new government, should extend to EVERY subject of GENERAL interest. It results then as a fair and conclusive argument, that whatever subject was purposely excluded from the enumerated powers of Congress by the vote of the Convention, as an unfit subject for the care of the General Government, could not have been regarded as a general interest. A general power to promote Manufactures, Agriculture and Science, and to construct roads and canals, was positively and peremptorily excluded; and this, in the opinion of your committee, is an unanswerable reason why these subjects ought to be deemed LOCAL, and not general; if it were not already demonstrable to our senses, that any particular persuit of human industry, followed by the people of some States, and in which those of other States are not at all engaged, must be a local interest of the States. 4. Fourthly-Your committee are of opinion, that Congress has no power to construct roads and canals within the limits of a State, without a violation of the Constitution. The power of making roads and canals is not an incidental, but is as primary and as original a That must be a subpower as any government can possibly exercise. stantive power in the strongest acceptation of the term, which involves a right of jurisdiction over soil and territory. From this species of juris. diction, Congress is clearly prohibited by those clauses in the Constitution, which confine their jurisdiction to their forts, magazines, dock yards, &c. But independent of the plain extent of the instrument itself, as collected from its language, the journals of the Convention afford the evidence, that it was deemed unadvisable to entrust Congress with any such power. All the propositions to include roads and canals amongst the enumerated subjects for the National Legislature, were rejected. There existed a reason for the refusal of such a power to Congress, which your committee must ever regard as conclusive, which is, that such a power in Congress as well as in the States, would have been repugnant to the whole scheme and theory of the Constitution. The design of the Convention was, so to discriminate the objects which were to appertain to the different departments of power, that what was to be committed to the charge of one government, should not be interfered with by the other. The great difficulty in distributing power, was to adjust the quantity with which the General Government should be invested. That point once arranged, each government was then to be supreme in Legislation, as to the particular objects entrusted to its care. As the States had been in the habit of making roads and were fully competent to exercise such a power, and to the greatest advantage, it was not to be expected that they would be willing to yield this their power over Internal Improvements. To have admitted therefore, that a similar power ought to be invested in Congress, would involve the absurdity of causing the same object of Legislation and government to belong to the Federal and to the State authorities. There is no such hideous features as this, in the Federal compact. If the Constitution be examined with accuracy, it will be found, that with the exception of the two first enumerated powers of Congress, (which are means and not the ends of the government, or rather the power of the government, coupled with the trusts of the government,) that Congress must be regarded as supreme in Legislation, for all the objects entrusted to its management; and upon the REPORT AND RESOLUTIONS. same principle that Congress is supreme within its prescribed sphere of action, are the States equally supreme as o all objects reserved 1827. to them. If Congress therefore, can legislate on the subject of roads and canals, the States cannot interfere by exercising a similar power, (for both cannot have jurisdiction,) and vice versa. The subject of Internal Improvements, is either a general or local interest, in the view of the Constitution. It cannot be both. If it be a general interest, Congress must either be supreme in its jurisdiction over the subject, by extending its laws to such roads and canals, to the exclusion of State authority, or it cannot act at all. There can be no concurrence of Legislation, excepting as to the means of executing the different trust; for which each government was created. The bare admission that a State can lawfully exercise sovereignty on any particular object of civil government, deprives Congress of any power over the same object. The States having always exercised the power over roads and canals, and there being no specific grant of any such power to Congress, the right is in the States and not in Congress. Nor can your Committee conceive that the assent even of a State Legislature to Internal Improvements, made by Congress within its limits, can confer on that body the power in question. Congress has no right to exercise any power whatever, but what it receives by special grants from the States. If a State were to give to another State a power to construct a road or a canal within its limits, this would amount to a transfer to that State of a portion of its sovereignty. Were Congress to be permitted to receive such a power as a gift from any particular State, it would be to say, that Congress can exercise a new sovereign power unknown to the Constitution, with the consent of, or by the act of one State. This principle will hardly be contended for. It is too clear, that Congress can exercise no powers but what it receives from the States, by the terms of the Constitution. If, the better to promote union, it needs additional powers, the mode prescribed is an amendment to the Constitution. If a State can part with the smallest portion of its sovereignty to Congress, it can part with the whole; and if Congress could receive an accession of power in this way, it would be to put it in the power of one State to amend the Constitution, when the instrument requires the assent of three fourths, and that assent to be given in another way. There are other views of this subject, but they have been so often taken, and are so familiar to our citizens, that your committee forbear to dwell longer on this head, but proceed to that part of their inquiry, which asks, 5. Fifthly, Whether under the power "to promote the general welfare," Congress can expend money on internal improvements, or for any purposes not connected with the enumerated objects in the Constitution. What has already been urged in the preceding inquiry, will be equally applicable to this. If Congress has not the power to construct roads and canals in the States, it cannot appropriate money for such purposes. Congress has either all power over certain trusts, or no power at all. There can be no such operation in either government, as indirect legislation, in order to come at any particular object. Each government is fully invested with complete authority to approach the legitimate objects of its own special or general care, honestly, fairly, and openly. If, in the desire to obtain any particular object, either government discovers that it cannot reach that object otherwise than circuitously, this is conclusive to shew, that it belongs not to itself but to the opposite government. The term "general welfare," in the opinion of your committee, means nothing more than the national welfare. That can only be deemed an appropriation for AND national purposes, which can be referred to objects of general interest in REPORT all the States. These objects being all specified in the Federal compact, RESOLUTIONS. it follows, that if any appropriation of money has not a direct and a natu- 1827. ral relation to some one or other of those objects, it cannot constitutionally be made. The enumerated objects in the Constitution, (with the exception of the power to levy and appropriate money) are the TRUSTS which Congress is to execute. The power to appropriate money to the general welfare is not a naked power. It is the POWER coupled with the TRUSTS, to execute which, the government was created. 6. Sixthly. As to that part of the duty of the Committee which solicits an inquiry whether Congress can extend its legislation to the means of meliorating the condition of the free coloured or slave population of the United States, your Committee have no hesitation in saying, that this is a subject in which there can be no reasoning, between South-Carolina and any other government. It is a question altogether of FEELING. Should Congress claim a power to discuss and to take any vote upon any question connected with the domestic slavery of the Southern States, (excepting it be to devise the means of prohibiting the slave trade, the only power which it has by the terms of the Constitution,) it is not for your Committee to prescribe what course ought to be adopted to counteract the evil and the dangerous tendency of public discussions of this nature. The minds of your citizens are already made up, that if such discussions appertain as a matter of right to Congress, it will be neither more nor less than the commencement of a system, by which, the peculiar policy of South Carolina, upon which are predicated her resources and her prosperity, will be shaken to its very foundations. In the opinion of your Committee, there is nothing in the catalogue of human evils, which may not be preferred to that state of affairs, in which the slaves of our States shall be encouraged to look for any melioration in their condition, to any other body, than to the State Legislature of South Carolina. Your Committee forbear to dwell on this subject-it is a subject on which no citizen of South Carolina needs instruction-one common feeling inspires us all with a firm determination not to submit to a species of legislation which would light up such fires of intestine commotion in our borders, as ultimately to consume our country. Lastly--It remains for your Committee to report what measures in their judgment the Legislature ought to take in order to preserve the State sovereignty. This is an inquiry of awful importance, and the committee are not disposed to shrink from the duty thus devolved on them. That the Congress of the United States has been in the exercise of powers, not warranted by the Constitution, and that the tendency of some of their measures is calculated, seriously to impair the vital interests of South Carolina, by diminishing her foreign commerce, whilst the effect of other measures is to augment the patronage of the General Government, and thus to diminish that necessary State influence, which is essential to the preservation of the State sovereignties, and which State influence can only exist, when the States are to manage all internal concerns, are truths daily becoming more and more evident to all our citiSouth Carolina felt them sorely, but she has not murmured-from the foundation of the government until the present time, she has uniformly exhibited, as your Committee believe, an illustrious example of a steady and an unalterable devotion to the constitution of the United States. She has never at any time arrayed herself against the Government of the Union, but has discharged all her duties as a member of the great American family, with fidelity and cheerfulness. If she has not hitherto car zens. REPORT AND RESOLUTIONS. 1827. ried her complaints to the great councils of the nation, it was not because she had no cause of dissatisfaction, but because she always cherished the hope that some re-action in public sentiment throughout the United States might take place, and that the People themselves would in time be made sensible of the danger of a limited body, like that of Congress, being permitted to transcend its powers, and would apply the remedy. But these hopes your committee regret to state are all dissipated, and they too plainly perceive, that to submit longer to the evils of misrule founded on usurpation, can have no other tendency, than to invite such fresh assumptions of power from time to time, as must inevitably merge all power and all influence in one consolidated government. It is fortunate for South Carolina that she has hitherto endured with so much patience, and certainly with not less patriotism, the aggressions of Congress upon her sovereign rights. But let her remonstrances be couched and her complaints be told in a mild and dignified tone, and in respectful language. In all her communications with the common head of the confederated family, let her unceasing anxiety for the Union of the States, be seen, felt and acknowledged by all. If, after all her efforts to dissuade the national councils from persisting in claims, which if pressed farther, must inevitably cut us off, limb by limb, from the great body politic, Congress shall, contrary to the hopes of your committee, still persevere in its claims to exercise extensive powers by construction, and thus drive into alienated feelings a portion of the Union, hitherto so devoted to Union; South Carolina, in such an event, will have at least the consolation to know, that the fault will not be her's. But in the opinion of your Committee, it is all-important that whatever is to be done by South Carolina, ought to be so done, as to impress upon the minds of the Congress of the United States, that she does not at this conjuncture approach the National Legislature as a suppliant, or as a memorialist, but as a SOVEREIGN and an EQUAL. When Congress acts within the sphere of its expressly delegated powers, the supremacy of its laws and its powers must be acknowledged by all the States, and by no State in the Union, will obedience to the decrees of the Supreme Council be more cheerfully rendered, than by South Carolina. But when the ground of complaint is, a violation of the great covenant which binds together the Confederacy, each member is a sovereign, when it demands a fulfilment of that compact in its spirit, as well as in its letter, as it was when it originally ratified that agreement. In all communications, therefore, which may be necessary between a member of the Confederacy, and the common head, it behoves that member not to forget her Rank as a Sovereign. At such a time she must be attired in her full robes of sovereignty-she must cause her sentiments to be conveyed to Congress in a manner so imposing, as to evince that she would have the intercourse regulated as is proper between one sovereign and another; and that whilst she would earnestly solicit a continuance of that friendship and good feeling, which has so long been characteristic of the American family, she is yet unwilling to yield rights of vital importance. To the safety of States, it is indispensable that Congress should be in perpetual remembrance, that it is a sovereign and supreme body, only when it extends its authority to its legitimate objects of government-and that at ALL OTHER periods, the States are equally supreme, and never so supreme as when they are about to demand the fulfilment of the original compact. The sovereignty of the States is a flag that must NEVER be struck. If there be one feature in our well-contrived and complicated system of government, which justly demands the admiration of the world-upon |