2. A political system that does not provide for a peacea ble and authoritative termination of occurring controversies, would not be more than the shadow of a Government; the object and end of a real Government being the substitution of law and order, for uncertainty, confusion and violence. 3. That to have left a final decision, in such cases, to each of the States, then thirteen, and already twenty-four, could not fail to make the Constitution and laws of the United States different in different states, was obvious and not less obvious, that this diversity of independent decisions, must altogether distract the Government of the Union, and speedily put an end to the Union itself.

4. A uniform authority of the laws is in itself a vital principle. Some of the most important laws could not be partially executed. They must be executed in all the States, or they could be duly executed in none. An impost, or an excise for example, if not in force in some States, would be defeated in others. It is well known that this was among the lessons of experience, which had a primary influence in bringing about the existing Constitution.

5. A loss of its general authority would moreover revive the exasperating questions between the States holding ports for foreign commerce, and the adjoining States without them; to which are now added, all the inland States, necessarily carrying on their foreign commerce through other States.

6. To have made the decisions under the authority of the individual States, co-ordinate, in all cases, with the decisions under the authority of the United States, would unavoidably produce collisions incompatible with the peace of society, and with that regular and efficient administration, which is of the essence of free goverment. Scenes could not be avoided, in which a ministerial officer of the United States, and the correspondent officer of an individual State, would have rencounters in executing conflicting decrees; the result of which would depend on the comparative force of the local posses attending them; and that, a casualty depending on the political opinions and party feeling in different States.

7. To have referred every clashing decision, under the two authorities, for a final decision, to the States, as parties to the Constitution, would be attended with delays, with inconveniences, and with expenses, amounting to a prohibition of the expedient; not to mention its tendency to impair

the salutary veneration for a system requiring such frequent interpositions, nor the delicate questions which might present themselves as to the form of stating the appeal, and as to the quorum for deciding it.

8. To have trusted to negotiation for adjusting disputes between the Government of the United States and the State Governments, as between independent and separate sovereignties, would have lost sight altogether of a Constitution and Government for the Union; and opened a direct road from a failure of that resort to the ultima ratio between nations wholly independent of and alien to each other. If the idea had its origin in the process of adjustment, between separate branches of the same government, the analogy entirely fails.

9. In the case of disputes between the independent parts of the same government, neither part being able to consummate its will, nor the government to proceed without a concurrence of the parts, necessarily brings about an accommodation. In disputes between a State Government and the Government of the United States, the case is practically as well as theoretically different; each party possessing all the departments of an organized government, legislative, executive and judicial; and having each a physical force to support its pretensions.

10. Although the issue of negotiation might sometimes avoid this extremity, how often would it happen, among so many States, that unaccommodating spirit in some would render that resource unavailing? A contrary supposition would not accord with a knowledge of human nature, or the evidence of our own political history.

LESSON CXLII.

The same continued.

1. It is to be recollected that the Constitution was proposed to the people of the States as a whole, and unanimously adopted by the States as a whole, it being a part of the Constitution that not less than three-fourths of the States should be competent to make any alteration in what had been unanimously agreed to. So great is the caution on this point, that in two cases where peculiar interests were

at stake, a proportion even of three-fourths is distrusted, and unanimity required to make an alteration.

2. When the Constitution was adopted as a whole, it is certain that there were many parts, which, if separately proposed, would have been promptly rejected. It is far from impossible, that every part of a Constitution might be rejected by a majority, and yet taken together as a whole, be unanimously accepted. Free Constitutions will rarely, if ever, be formed, without reciprocal concessions; withont articles conditioned on and balancing each other. Is there a Constitution of a single State out of the twenty-four, that would bear the experiment of having its component parts submitted to the people, and separately decided on?

3. What the fate of the Constitution of the United States would be, if a small proportion of the States could expunge parts of it particularly valued by a large majority, can have but one answer. The difficulty is not removed by limiting the doctrine to cases of construction. How many cases of that sort, involving cardinal provisions of the Constitution, have occurred? How many now exist? How many may hereafter spring up? How many might be ingeniously created, if entitled to the privilege of a decision in the mode proposed?

4. Is it certain that the principle of that mode would not reach further than is contemplated? If a single State can of right require three-fourths of its co-States to overrule its exposition of the Constitution, because that proportion is authorised to amend it, would the plea be less plausible, that, as the Constitution was unanimously established, it ought to be unanimously expounded?

5. The reply to all such suggestions seems to be unavoidable and irresistible; that the Constitution is a compact, that its text is to be expounded according to the provisions for expounding it making a part of the compact; and that none of the parties can rightfully renounce the expounding provision more than any other part. When such a right accrues as may accrue, it must grow out of abuses of the compact releasing the sufferers from their fealty to it.

6. It may often happen, as experience proves, that erro neous constructions not anticipated may not be sufficiently guarded against, in the language used; and it is due to the distinguished individuals who have misconceived the inten tion of those proceedings, to suppose that the meaning of

the Legislature, though well comprehended at the time, may not now be obvious to those unacquainted with the contemporary indications and impressions.

7. But it is believed, that, by keeping in view the distinction between the Governments of the States, and the States in the sense in which they were parties to the Constitution; between the rights of the parties, in their concurrent and in their individual capacities; between the several modes and objects of interposition against the abuses of power, and especially between interpositions within the purview of the Constitution, and interpositions appealing from the Constitution to the rights of nature paramount to all Constitutions; with an attention, always of explanatory use, to the views and arguments which were combatted, the Resolutions of Virginia, as vindicated in the report on them, will be found entitled to an exposition, showing a consistency in their parts, and an inconsistency of the whole with the doctrine under consideration.

LESSON CXLIII.

Apostrophe of Napoleon Bonaparte.

1. O bury me deep in the boundless sea,
Let my heart have a limitless grave;
For my spirit in life was as fierce and free
As the course of the tempest wave.

2. As far from the reach of mortal control

Were the depths of my fathomless mind;
And the ebbs and flows of my single soul,
Were tides to the rest of mankind.

3. Then my briny pall shall encircle the world,
As in life did the voice of my fame;

And each mountainous billow, that skyward curled,
Shall to fancy re-echo my name.

1. That name shall be stored in record sublime
In the uttermost corners of earth,

And beam till the wreck of expiring time,
On the glorified land of
my birth.

5. Yes, bury my heart in the boundless sea-
It would burst from a narrower tomb;-
Should less than an ocean his sepulchre be
Whose breast was ambition's proud home?

IMPEY.

LESSON CXLIV.

Extract from a Sermon on the Moral Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise.

1. And now, my hearers, deliberately consider the nature of the missionary enterprise. Reflect upon the dignity of its object, the high moral and intellectual powers, which are to be called forth in its execution! the simplicity, benevolence, and efficacy of the means by which all this is to be achieved; and we ask you, does not every other enterprise, to which man ever put forth his strength, dwindle into insignificance before that of preaching Christ crucified to a lost and perishing world.

2. Engaged in such an object, you can easily perceive how it is that we are not soon disheartened by those who tell us of the difficulties, nay, the hopelessness of our un dertaking. They may point us to countries, once the seat of the church, now overspread with Mohammedan delusion; or bidding us look at nations, who once believed as we do, now contending for what we consider fatal error, they may assure us that our cause is declining.

3. The assumption that our cause is declining is utterly gratuitous. We think it not difficult to prove that the distinctive principles we so much venerate, never swayed so powerful an influence over the destinies of the human race, as at this very moment. Point us to those nations of the earth to whom moral and intellectual cultivation, inexhaustible resources, progress in arts, sagacity in council, have assigned the highest rank in political importance, and you point us to nations, whose religious opinions are most closely allied to those we cherish.

4. Besides, when was there a period, since the days of the Apostles, in which so many converts have been made to these principles as have been made, both from Christian and Pagan nations, within the last five and twenty years. Never did the people of the saints of the Most High look