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her full consent, the citizen found in that nefarious traffic, is pronounced a pirate, and the gallows is his reward. Other happy changes might be mentioned, but I forbear. I ask you -Were not men of high moral sensibility justified, thirty years ago, upon these subjects, in employing a language which if used now would be false and slanderous? Such men will not employ it. They rejoice in the change, while they are neither blind nor silent as to remaining defects. The change of their language, let it be noted, is predicated on the change of things about which they speak. Are we not authorized to conclude, that the judgment of those, who, in these changes, see nothing worthy of notice, must be perverted by some strange and unaccountable influence?

But another objection is urged: Admitting all that is said to be fact,-The state of New-York is a member of the Federal Union, and is in league with slave holding states.

Be it so yet New-York is not a slave holding state.She has emancipated her slaves, and upon her soil none can be held in bondage. She approves not of the slavery of the south, nor is she required to approve of it. Like Pennsylvania and other states, she has, by legislative resolutions, instructed her representatives in congress, to seek its abolition in the only place where that body can act upon the subject.— The great objects of the Union are right, laudable, and indispensible, to public independence and safety; its provisions are not immoral, though all the parties united be not equally moral. Against the confederacy no objection can be urged, which would not hold with equal force, against a virtuous individual associating with or under men of doubtful reputation, on the field of battle, or in the partnerships of business.

The great and only practical moral evil, charged upon the Federal government, was the recognition of the slave trade. Whether this, to the extent supposed, or at all, was chargeable against the Confederation, is not at this day a practical question. If the hands of the Federal government were bound up from acting against the slave trade, it was only till the year 1808, a period, indeed, too long by twenty years; but which after all that has been said, was the first effectual step of the kind, ever taken among the empires of christendom, toward the abolition of the slave trade. In this much abused document, we find thirteen independent sovereignties raising up a

power, authorized at a given day to employ their resources in stopping that profligate course of murder and plunder; and, mean while, each of those sovereignties had power to say, and most of them did say,-Our soil shall not be polluted by the importation of another slave. The Federal government does not,-it never did,-interpose an obstacle to the emancipation of the slaves of any state. For twenty-four years the United States have prohibited the African slave trade. The citizen engaged in it, upon conviction, is liable to execution as a pirate. When all the truth is brought forth in evidence, and a court, impartial, and otherwise competent, shall sit upon it in judgment, for the moral character of our bond of Federal Union no fears need to be entertained. To this subject your attention shall be called in my next. Mean time, adieu.

LETTER III.

THE CHARACTER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

Dear Sir,

AFTER glancing at the state constitutions, it was proposed to consider the effect of the Union upon their moral character. Viewed in themselves, should we take that of New-York as a specimen, and some of them at least are not inferior to it, they appear, not perfect, indeed, but free from any stain of positive immorality; and admitting their own imperfection, provide in themselves for their own progressive amendment. The question then occurs,-Does their relation to the Federal bond of union corrupt them? To obtain a satisfactory reply to this query, that instrument must be examined, its nature understood, its provisions considered, and its ends perceived. The subject will not be well understood unless we advert to the history of the times, the condition of the country, and what was requisite to the improvement of that which had been achieved.

In treating of the moral aspect of our civil institutions, it appears to me important to remark, that their whole frame and spirit are different from what obtains in the several departments of the empire of the "Man of Sin." The pilgrims of the Tabernacle, and the covenanted friends of the federation of

churches and of states, in the bonds of peace and righteousness, sought their way across the trackless deep, that on the shores of "the land of forests," they might enjoy the rights of nature and the freedom of the gospel. Their principles were in perpetual conflict with the spirit of European domination; nor did the struggle terminate till the declaration of July 4th, 1776, snapped the chain which had bound us to the British throne, and proclaimed an association of western empires free, emancipated from, and triumphant over, the schemes and principles of anti-christian misrule. The declaration of independence was the consistent, nay, the inevitable result of the conflict, so long maintained. The cup of infatuated policy was placed in England's guilty hand, and her statesmen drank it to the dregs; while God gave wisdom in counsel and energy in action, to those struggling on this side the Atlantic, for the rights of man. They succeeded. The recognition of their independence and the declaration of peace, found the states exhausted by a long and bloody war; involved in debt; connected by feeble ties; with conflicting interests; exposed to continued internal feuds, the intrigues of the ambitious, the violence of factionists; and in danger of becoming the victims of foreign intrigue, or of foreign violence.

The day had now dawned, on which trial was to be made whether the privations, the sufferings, the perils, the blood, and the desolations of a seven years' war, were all to go for nought, -whether man be capable of self-government,-whether the fury of anarchy and the dead calm of despotism must alterternately, without hope of better, mark his lot;—or whether an example should be exhibited, upon an extended scale, of his capacity to rule himself, secure the interests of virtue and the means of happiness, and thus falsify the doctrine of tyrants and their hired minions. Never to the care of imperfect man was there committed a state subject of deeper moral interest; -a subject in which humanity throughout the nations was more immediately concerned. Under the pressure of responsibilities rarely laid upon, or felt by man, did the convention of the American States assemble in A. D. 1787, in the city of Philadelphia. The members carried along with them an unusual amount of talent, information, political integrity, and patriotism. To reprobate the result of their toils and of their sacrifices, is, to the man who cares little for the moral grandeur

of his country, or who mistakes her interests, or those of humanity; who himself feels no responsibility for those interests, and is well assured, that neither this, nor a coming age, will hold him amenable for the condition, the character, and the progress of society at this day, an easy task. Permit me to say, that no man is prepared to decide justly upon the character of the Federal constitution, who is a stranger to the condition of things at the period of its formation, and the prospects then presented of the future; and who does not place himself in the relation of the citizen, upon whose counsel and vote, under God, were suspended, interests so awful, extensive and lasting, as the American Republics then embraced.

It is proper, too, to remark, that while we concede to the convention great political capacity and integrity, its members differed widely in their views of the frame of government most eligible for the states. Their peculiar circumstances and interests were many and very different. Some very powerful delegates were the advocates of a strong, national, consolidated, government, to the utter annihilation of the sovereignty of the states; taking the British government as the most perfect model. Another class contended for a national government, but in consistency with the continuance of the states, as distinct corporations under, and controllable by it. It was confessed that both these schemes were at variance with the views of the people of the several states. A third and more numerous portion of the delegates, in talent and integrity not inferior to their companions, were the friends of state sovereignty and advocated, not a National but a Federal government, invested with powers of a defined and very limited character. These conflicting views, for a while maintained with great pertinacity by their respective advocates, prolonged the discussions; and at times seemed to forbid the hope of a happy termination. The friends of a Federal government prevailed. This was what the people of the states authorized. The advocates of a National government, as patriots, yielded their own predilections to the common weal, and united in recommending the federal bond to the acceptance of all; though in some of its provisions not precisely such as they themselves approved. A spirit of moderation and mutual concession of local interests prevailed in the convention, and ultimately in the States. In the progress of the administration of the government, the con

tinued operation of that spirit of concession is indispensible to the prosperity of the land, and happy permanence of the Union.

It will not, however, be out of place to observe, that, while the advocates of a consolidated government yielded the federal form to the friends of the continued sovereignty of the States, they did not abandon their preference of the views they had previously entertained. Hence the discrepancy of interpretation given to the deed of federal compact.* Is it strange that the friends of a national government, generally, should have endeavoured in practice to bend the constitution, in accordance with their previous views? Or that the advocates of state rights should have plead for a strict and literal interpretation of that instrument? A constructive exposition, drawing upon implied grants of power, tends to enlarge the dominion of the federal government, and correspondently to limit the authority of the states; and just as this is effected, the old democracy of the Union has feared for the cause of civil liberty.

Should you think I dwell too long among the vexing questions of litigating policy, I trust to your candour to find an apology. You well know how much I despise little political squabbles, and how far I keep aloof from them. It is, however, different when great questions of state occur, and where the first men,-men high in intellectual powers and acquisitions, high in moral worth, and justly high in public confidence, are honestly ranged in opposite parties. I acknowledge my propensity to listen to their lessons, and though I may lean to one of the sides, I hope to be just in estimating the great value of the men upon the other. But I come now more directly to give you, in a few words, my view of the Union and its constitution. While I do this with deference to those who think differently, I do it with confidence of being substantially correct.

The constitution is a compact of sovereign states; the government is Federal, originating in the compact, and is the creature of the parties to the compact, for the accomplishment

*The Federalist is a standard work in the exposition of the Federal Constitution; and is, indeed, one of great merit. It is not, however, upon all points a satisfactory guide in the interpretation of that instrument. Its distinguished writers were solicitous for the adoption of the constitution; but two of them, at least, differed from each other in the explanation of some of its important provisions. And the suggestion, which is probably well founded, of the same writer being sometimes at variance with himself, may be accounted for, without affecting his justly high reputation.

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