Thus a pledge of faith on the part of the States, to abide by the determination of Congress on all questions, which by that Confederation should be submitted to them, is supposed to justify the author of this Proclamation in asserting, and as a consequence too of this, that no State could legally refuse to submit to the execution of any of their decisions. Vain would have been the reservation made in the second Article of the Confederation "by the jealousy of the States of all their power, jurisdiction and right, which was not by that confederation" expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled, if it was true, that no State could legally refuse to submit to the execution of a decision of the Congress, whether such decision was made to settle a question submitted to that body, or not.
But common sense tells every one, that when parties agree to submit some matter to the arbitrament of another, such a submission cannot authorize the arbiter to determine any thing, which was not submitted to him, or bind the faith of the parties to abide by any such unauthorized determination.
The President himself, has recently furnished a striking illustration of this obvious truth, in denying the obligation of the award made by the King of the Netherlands, (to whom Great Britain and the United States, by a compact as solemn as this our league of Confederation, had submitted the question concerning their common boundary,) upon the simple ground, that this arbiter had undertaken to determine what was never submitted to him.
If any one will take the trouble to examine the Articles of Confederation, he will find that there were but few questions submitted by that instrument to the determination of Congress. They are all stated in the ninth article; and are such, as to the submission of which, no two persons would or could disagree, probably. But should a question, unfortunately, have arisen, whether any matter was submitted, or not, as the parties to such a question, were admitted in the instrument itself, to be sovereign States, it resulted from necessity, that each had retained the right of deciding such a question for itself.—This effect was not the consequence of any want of power in the Old Congress "to enforce" their decisions, as the Proclamation supposes, for mere power
