that it is false, to suppose, that under these Articles, the government thereby created became an absolute government without limits to its authority; for although the several States were bound to submit to its decision in all matters referred to its determination by the Articles of Confederation themselves, yet these were but few in number, and the question as to the extent of the submission, never was, and could not have been submitted by the States reserving their sovereignty, but the determination of this question, so far as it might interest any one, was necessarily retained by each of the States for itself.
From all this, I feel myself justified in saying, that the original sovereignty of the States, assumed by them in 1776, remained unimpaired, until the adoption of the present Constitution of the Untied States in 1789. Whether by this instrument, that sovereignty was then annulled, is the question which I will next examine. At present, I will take leave to say, that as the existing political condition of these State,s is to be sought for in the Federal Constitution alone, it is to be regretted that the President thought it right, in his late Proclamation, to ascend to a period antecedent to the formation of this government, in order to teach the People, what is their situation under it. There was no necessity for this certainly, as he himself has proved; and if he had confined himself to a construction of the present Constitution, although he might have been supposed to err in this, he would at least have avoided such numerous inconsistencies, and gross historical mistakes, as are now exhibited every where in his work, to the great mortification of many of those who wished to be his friends.
But the new school of which he has become a proselyte, in exacting passive obedience and non-resistance to all its precepts, seems to have imposed upon him as a probationary penance for all his former sins against its faith, that he should not only publicly abjure the creed whose truth he has so often and so recently affirmed, but that he should also proclaim from his high place, the infallibility and supremacy of the Pontiff, and that these States never were his sovereigns. Less than this would not have been accepted as a sufficient atonement for his former offences, or as a satisfactory token to entitle him to admission to the communion of those politcial Saints, the sanctity of some of whom, is at least as questionable, as the truth of their new doctrines.
