The last conflict, however, was yet to ensue between the advocates of consolidation and the friends of State individuality.

On the 18th of August, the National Party made their last and desperate effort at consolidation, by advocating a series of resolutions, tending to aggrandize the proposed General Government at the expense of the reserved rights of the States. It was then proposed that the General Government be invested with the following power, to wit:

"To grant charters of incorporation in cases where the public good might require it, and the authority of a State would be incompetent."

"To establish a University."

"To encourage by proper premiums and provisions the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries."

"To establish Seminaries for the promotion of literature and the arts and sciences.

"To grant charters of incorporation."

"To grant patents for useful inventions."

"To secure to authors exclusive rights for a certain time."

"To establish public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufactures."-Jour. Conv., p. 210.

One of these propositions only was acceded to, and constitutes a part of the present Constitution. The rest we need not inform the reader, were all rejected, we presume upon the ground that, not being of general import, the State governments would prove every way adequate to their discharge. Thus defeated, the National Party never again resumed the field in an attitude sufficiently formidable to give the friends of State individuality any uneasiness.

Thus much then do we collect from the "Journal of the Convention," which though dealing only in results, furnishes us with a most accurate idea of the spirit which suggested opposition to, and which defeated the various propositions which were brought forward by the two parties into which the Convention was divided. Independent of the high source from which this authority emanates, having been published by and under the supervision of Congress, this work will ever be regarded the crystal source from whence all future commentators upon the Constitution must imbibe their arguments. Written in the purest historical style, being a mere record of facts, without the embellishment of philosophy, assigning causes for acknowledged facts, thereby liable to pervert the truth as it existed. As a specimen of simple, in contradistinction to philosophical history, this record will prove to the latest posterity the first and the most valuable exposition of the Constitution, of the formation of which it treats. When, then, we learn through such medium, that it was conceived that a government, "merely federal," could not answer the purpose designed to be accomplished by the amendment of the articles of confederation :—when we hear it announced that a "National Government" ought to be established :—when in the course of

its proceedings we find the Convention substituting the term "United States," instead of that of "National Government-when we perceive that the term "National Government" was altogether used in the resolutions submitted to the Committee of Five, from which it was to draft a constitution, and in vain search for the term in the report which came from this Committee: when we perceive the National Party of the Convention acquiescing in this obliteration of its favorite term:-when we know that the term "National" was never after used in the Convention, and the term United States being wholly used; what else can we infer, but that the majority of the Convention, though at first led by the impulse of nationalism-subsequently became altogether federal in their views, and that it preserved this character to the end of its deliberations as to the best form of government to be adopted. That being the deputies of sovereign and independent States; having received positive injunctions only to revise the existing Constitution, without annulling its fundamental feature, to wit, its confederate character, and as having to submit the results of their labors to these sovereign bodies, that they pursued the only reasonable course left them, namely, to amend and not to abrogate the existing confederacy, by establishing a national or consolidated government.

Having, as we conceive, proved to the satisfaction of every reasonable individual that the United States government, as it existed, under the articles of confederation, was formerly a confederacy of States, and that this its character was not subsequently altered in the Convention, which framed the present Constitution, it only remains for us to examine this instrument, and ascertain from the face of the record itself whether there is incorporated into it any of those national features so strenuously contended for by our opponents. Independent then of the historical evidences above deduced, there exists ample and conclusive testimony drawn from this indubitable source of authority, all tending to prove the individual or confederate character of the United States government, in opposition to its being a gov-/ ernment of the people of the United States, as one people; this document everywhere contemplating the States in their individual capacity; and nowhere but in the solitary exception of the Preamble countenancing an amalgamation of the people of the States, and even these expressions of, "We, the people of the United States," have been most unwarrantably distorted from their true and only signification. "We, the people of the United States," certainly can mean nothing more than what the terms literally impart, namely, We, the people of the United States or of the people of the States United, being one and the same thing, the qualifying adjective "United," being subject to be prefixed or annexed agreeable to the tongue in which it is used, Les Etats Unis being the mode used in the language of France expressive of the same thing;-and this view of the subject is fully sustained by contemporaneous exposition, which must ever be regarded, by all future commentators upon the Constitution, as conclusive as to its import. It is seldom that the ardent inquirer after constitutional truth is favored with so luminous and so steady a ray of light; and that, too, emanating

from so high and so pure a source. Mr. Madison, it will be recollected, was a strenuous advocate of the proposed constitution. The question was propounded by one of the stoutest champions of State sovereignty and independence. The body to whom it was propounded was that which framed the Constitution. When the orator of Virginia indignantly demands, "What right had the framers of the Constitution to say, "We, the people," instead of "We, the States? "States," he continued, "are the characteristics and soul of a confederacy. If the States be not the agents to the compact, it must be one great consolidated, national government, of the people of all the States." In answer to this pointed and momentous question, Mr. Madison replied, "Who are the parties to the government? The people; but not the people as composing one great body; but the people as composing Thirteen Sovereignties.'' Such evidence we may triumphantly assert to be irrefragable. With all history, however, falsifying the declaration, it has been boldly asserted, and that too, from the high place of authority, that the Constitution is a social compact between the people of the United States. A brief comment upon this last and most futile attempt at consolidation, will suffice.

In the whole range of the science of politics there is not an expression to be found whose signification is more fully and universally received than that of "Social Compact." These terms have always been used in a most definite sense. They are coëval with the first treatise on the formation of society, and have always implied that tacit or avowed consent whereby men first associated themselves together as a body politic; to assert, therefore, that the Constitution of the United States, which partakes so largely of the nature of a treaty between independent States, is based upon the social compact, is to disregard all historical evidence and the universally-accepted signification of the most common expressions, as these terms can have no place in relation to the Constitution of the United States, the people of the now United States being at that time already associated by said social compact into thirteen independent bodies politic. If these facts, however, did not obtain, how easy it would be to prove that the social compact contemplated by our opponents was never formed, there never having existed such a body politic as the people of the United States, who is said to have formed it.

There does not, nor has ever existed such a body politic as the people of the United States. In our next, we shall examine the Constitution itself, and see whether we can there find any recognition of this ignis fatuus of the consolidationists. Passing over the preamble as sufficiently explained, and conceiving that if nothing is to be found in the constitutional organization of the government of the United States, which countenances consolidation, other than these expressions, that they are consequently harmless, we shall commence ab initio, with the first article of the Constitution, and carefully cite every clause having the most remote connection with the question under consideration.

THE SERENADE.

L

WAKE, lady, wake! for the moonbeams are glowing
In light and in beauty o'er forest and hill;
The fair Housatonic is noiselessly flowing,

Where o'er the green meadows the night-dews distil.
The cool breath of evening shall murmur around thee,
And bear on its wing the sweet incense of flowers;
Then shake off the fetters of sleep which have bound thee,
And breezes shall waft thee this offering of ours.

11.

The sunshine of hope no dark sorrow has shrouded -
Each note that thou hearest shall tell thee of joy;
For the heart whose young life is still pure and unclouded
Is a world of delight which no fears can destroy.
But if thou lovest better the language of sadness,

If sorrow has blighted the hopes that were dear, Still, in moments of grief, as in moments of gladness, 'Tis music has power both to soothe and to cheer.

III.

Then wake, lady, wake! 'mid the quiet of even
Forget for a moment thy cares and thy woes;
This world, in its beauty, seems almost like heaven,
So holy and calm is its breathless repose.
Nor drain from thy heart the illusions that borrow
Their sweetness from Fancy's too changeable ray;
Enjoy what thou canst while it's near, for to-morrow
Its light and enchantment may vanish away.

M. J. C.

[TIME, which tests the truth of every thing, has done justice to the reputation for sagacity, wisdom, and patriotism of the AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. We, therefore, offer no explanation for republishing the accompanying document; neither, in our estimation, does the text, especially at this time, require any commentary. -ED.]

An Act for establishing Religious Freedom, passed in the Assembly of Virginia in the beginning of the year 1786.

WELL aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coërcions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow-citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments,