guage. We can imagine, however, why the Northern States should wish to get rid of both the idea of a compact and of the word; why the powerful should wish to obliterate and erase from the tablets of their memory every recollection and vestige of the solemn compact or bargain. into which they had entered with the weak, but which they have never observed in good faith.

It is perfectly certain that Mr. Webster's horror of the term compact, as applied to the Constitution, is of com. paratively recent origin. It was wholly unknown to the fathers of the Constitution themselves. Mr. Gouverneur Morris, it is well known, was one of the most celebrated advocates for a strong national government in the Convention of 1787; and yet, in that assembly, he used the words "He came here to form a compact for the good of America. He was ready to do so with all the States. He hoped and believed that all would enter into such a compact. If they would not, he would be ready to join with any States that would. But as the compact was to be voluntary, it is in vain for the Eastern States to insist on what the Southern States will never agree to."* Thus, this celebrated representative of the State of Pennsylvania, and staunch advocate of a strong national government, did not hesitate to call the Constitution a compact into which the States were to enter. Indeed, no one, at that. early day, either before the Constitution was adopted or afterwards, hesitated to call it a compact.

Mr. Gerry, the representative of Massachusetts, says, "If nine out of thirteen (States) can dissolve the compact, six out of nine will be just as able to dissolve the new one hereafter." Here again the new Constitution is called a compact.

"In the case of a union of people under one Constitution," says Mr. Madison, while contending for the ratification of the new Constitution by the people, "the nature of * "Madison Papers," p. 1081-2.

the pact has always been understood to exclude such an interpretation."* Thus, in the Convention of 1787, Mr. Madison called the Constitution a compact; a word which he continued to apply to it during the whole course of his life.

In the celebrated resolutions of Virginia, in 1798, Mr. Madison used these words, "That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties." Again, in his almost equally celebrated letter to Mr. Everett, in 1830, he calls "the Constitution" "a compact among the States in their highest sovereign capacity." In the same letter Mr. Madison speaks of the States as "the parties to the Constitutional compact;" using the very expression which is so offensive to Mr. Webster's new "political grammar." Nay, it was only three years before, in the great debate on Foote's resolutions, that Mr. Webster himself had, like every one else, spoken of the Constitution as a compact, as a bargain which was obligatory on the parties to it. "It is the original bargain," says he, in that debate; "the compact-let it stand; let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefits to be hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the Constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is." Nor is this all. He there indignantly repels, both for "himself and for the North," "accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the Constitutional compact." Yet, in the course of three short years, he discovers that there is no compact to be evaded and no bargain to be violated! All such trammels are given to the winds, and Behemoth is free! How sudden and how wonderful this revolution in the views and in the vocabulary of the great orator of New England!†

*Madison Papers, p. 1184.

The great mind of Mr. Webster was in general more like the

This language, in which the Constitution is called a compact, is not confined to Morris, and Gerry, and Madison, and the Webster of 1830. Mr. Chief Justice Jay, of the Supreme Court of the Union, in the case of "Chisholm vs. State of Georgia," expressly declares that "the Constitution of the United States is a compact."+ "Our Constitution of the United States," says John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the Republic, "and all our State Constitutions, have been voluntary compacts, deriving all their authority from the free consent of the parties to them." The Virginia Resolutions of 1798, already referred to as expressing the opinion of Mr. Madison, assert that "Virginia views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact to which the States are parties." Again, in the Virginia Report of 1800, it is said, "The States being parties to the Constitutional compact," &c. Edmund Pendleton, President of the ratifying Convention of Virginia, in 1788, in the course of his argument in favor of the new Constitution, says, "This is the only Government founded in real compact." Judge Tucker, in his commentaries on Blackstone, repeatedly calls the Constitution in question "a compact between the States" of the Union. The third President of the United States,

ocean in repose than in action; and, as is well known, his habitual indolence often induced him to rely on others for political information. No one who will attentively compare his speech of 1833 with book III., chap. 3, of Story's "Commentaries on the Constitution," can be at any loss to account for the origin of his " new political grammar," his "new rules of syntax," and his "new vocabulary.' If he applies these epithets to the doctrines of Morris, and Gerry, and Madison, it is because old things have become new with him, and new things old. The secret of this revolution will be found, as we shall soon prove, in the work of Mr. Justice Story, which work was not written in 1830. Indeed it was not published until 1833; but then the first volume, containing book III., chap. 3, was prepared, if not printed, before the speech of Mr. Webster, with whom the author was on the most intimate terms. It would have been well for the fame of Webster, in the eye of posterity, if he had more carefully examined such a question for himself.

† 3 Dall. R. p. 419.

Elliot's Debates, vol. iii., p. 57.

as well as the sixth, Thomas Jefferson as well as John Quincy Adams, considered the Constitution "a compact." "The States," says Jefferson, "entered into a compact, which is called the Constitution of the United States.* The Convention of Massachusetts, which was called to ratify the Constitution of the United States, was, if possible, still more emphatic and decided in the expression of the same opinion. "Having impartially discussed, and fully considered," say they, "the Constitution of the United States of America," we acknowledge, "with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe in affording the people of the United States an opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud and surprise, of entering into an explicit and solemn compact with each other, by assenting to and ratifying a new Constitution," &c. Yet, in the face of all these high authorities, and of a hundred more that might be easily adduced, running from James Madison in the Convention of 1787 to Daniel Webster in the great debate of 1830, and embracing the lights of all sections and of all parties, it is asserted by this celebrated statesman, though certainly not as a statesman, that the term compact, as applied to the Constitution, is "a new word," is a part and parcel of "the unconstitutional language," of the "new vocabulary," which has been invented to obscure the fundamental principles of the Government of the United States, and to justify secession! Can posterity admire such an exhibition of his powers!

So far, indeed, is this from being a new mode of speech, that it is one of the most familiar words known to the fathers of the Constitution itself, or to its more early expounders. Even the Federalist, in submitting the Constitution to the people, sets it before them as "the compact." "The man," says Mr. Webster, "is almost untrue to his country who calls the Constitution a compact." It

*Correspondence. Vol. iv., p. 415.

† No. XXXIX.

were, indeed, much nearer the truth to say that the man is not only almost but altogether untrue to himself, as well as to the most solemn records of his country, who can assert that the term compact, as applied to the Constitution, is "a new word," or the exponent of a new idea.

The arguments of Mr. Webster to prove that the Constitution is not a compact, are, if possible, as unfortunate as his assertions. If words be not things in reality, as well as in effect, then it will be found that his arguments possess an exceedingly small value. There are two words, in particular, in the use of which he displays far more of rhetorical legerdemain than of rigid logic. These are the two words "compact" and "Constitution."

No one pretends, for a moment, that every compact is a Constitution. There are compacts about soap and candles, about pepper and calicoes, or some such trifling thing, which no one would call a Constitution. It is only when a compact has for its object the institution or organization of a political society, or a civil government, that it is properly denominated a Constitution. Hence, in the ordinary acceptation of the words, compact falls far below the high-sounding noun substantive Constitution; a circumstance of which any rhetorician may, if he choose, very easily avail himself. Mr. Webster has done so, and that, too, with no little popular effect. "We know no more of a Constitutional compact between sovereign powers," says he, "than we do of a Constitutional indenture of partnership, a Constitutional deed of conveyance, or a Constitutional bill of exchange. But we know what the Constitution is," &c. Perhaps we do, and perhaps we do not; that is the very point in dispute. But certain it is, that if we do know what the Constitution is we need not seek to illustrate its nature or to exhibit its history by any such deceptive use of words. Akin to this sort of reasoning, or rhetoric, is all that is said by Mr. Webster and Mr. Justice Story about lowering the Constitution by considering it as