served rights? None was stated, but the proposition to authorize the employment of force against a delinquent State was denounced on all sides of the convention and rejected without a division. In the original draft of the Constitution the term "national government" was written: to this expression Mr. Ellsworth objected, and moved to drop the word "national" and retain the proper title, "the United States"; which motion was unanimously adopted by the convention. Both the coercion of a State and the use of the term "national government" were emphatically condemned by the framers of the Constitution.
A compact was made between independent States by which expressly-enumerated powers were delegated to a government instituted for their common benefit, which was a partnership without limitation. No mode of terminating it was specified, but Mr. Madison, than whom none was better informed of the opinions and purposes of the members of the convention, in the number of The Federalist heretofore quoted (which was an argument to justify secession from the confederation) wrote:
"It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties that all articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach committed by either of the parties absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the Federal pact, will not the complaining parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and important infractions with which they may be confronted? The time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas which this paragraph exhibits."
It is unfortunate that the convention should have thought proper to veil the delicate truth and did not in plain terms announce the right of a State to secede from the Union whenever it should cease to answer the ends for which it was established, viz., to insure domestic tranquillity and promote the general welfare. Our past history distinctly shows how reluctant any State would be to sever her connection with the Union; and may it not reasonably be inferred that, if the right to withdraw had been recognized, there would have been additional care not to give just cause for the exercise of that right?
Though not expressed, the existence of the right was often asserted and rarely, if ever, denied anterior to 1861. It cannot be said that it was then for the first time formally asserted and
