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Senators and officers of the Senate. Foreign ministers and suites. United States and Mexican commissioners for the adjustment of claims under the convention with Mexico. Members of the House of Representatives, and officers. Governors of States and Territories and members of State legislatures.
The Supreme Court of the United States gives decisions on the construing of the Constitution, and who ever heard of a decision of the Supreme Court being sent down to be ratified by the State Legislatures? The Supreme Court of the United States construes the Constitution, without any reference to the State Legislatures, and so we construe law without any reference to the Annual Conferences.
Although popular conventions had come into use in forming the various State Constitutions, the Congress maintained its early diplomatic and consulting nature by dealing with the State Legislatures instead of popular conventions. The members of Congress were too well aware of the many defects in the new frame to hope that it would be speedily adopted.
"Between our omnipresent legislatures which spend our time and money repealing what we lawyers already know, and enacting laws for the courts to set aside, these are what might be called parlous times for the profession, but my long suit is not in understanding statutes, but people." Insensibly he had dropped his flippant tone, and was speaking, seriously, with conviction.
Both Houses have been flooded with petitions and memorials by the thousands: from Legislatures, Chambers of Commerce, Societies, Churches, from associations of every sort, and from perhaps a million citizens. The Capitol looks like a paper factory. If autonomy fails soon enough, or if some new chapter of horrors can be concocted by the Yellow Press, or if the unforeseen happens, war will come.
The court might have simply sent it back, as a matter belonging to the State court to decide; but it permitted itself to argue the question throughout, and pronounced on the natural inferiority of the negro, and his legal condition as property, the competence of the State courts to decide his freedom or slavery, and the right of slaveholders under the Constitution to control their property in the free States or Territories, any legislation by Congress or local legislatures to the contrary notwithstanding.
Without such power the Constitution could never have lasted, for neither executive officers nor legislatures are good judges of the extent of their own powers. Nothing more strikingly shows the spirit of unity which the Constitution brought into being than the unbroken success with which the Supreme Court has discharged this difficult and most delicate duty.
Grattan's best friends had urged upon him in vain that refusing to assent to a commercial treaty made the permanent government by two independent legislatures impossible, and would bring about separation; he refused to be guided by their advice, and at that time he still had supreme power in the House.
President Edwards, the younger, said, in a sermon preached before the Connecticut Abolition Society, Sept. 15, 1791: "Thirty years ago, scarcely a man in this country thought either the slave trade or the slavery of negroes to be wrong; but now how many and able advocates in private life, in our legislatures, in Congress, have appeared, and have openly and irrefragably pleaded the rights of humanity in this as well as other instances?
My idea is that we shall encourage home manufactures to the extent of our own consumption of everything of which we raise the raw material." The Legislatures of Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, and Ohio fixed a day, after which no imported clothing should be worn by members. Pennsylvania used the proceeds of a dog tax to introduce a better breed of sheep into the State.
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