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._ The scene is now changed, and
with it the part which the same motives dictate."

Mr. Madison's idea of the propriety of _veiling_ any statement of the
right of secession until the occasion arises for its exercise, whether
right or wrong in itself, is eminently suggestive as explanatory of the
caution exhibited by other statesmen of that period, as well as himself,
with regard to that "delicate truth."

The only possible alternative to the view here taken of the seventh
article of the Constitution, as a provision for the secession of any
nine States, which might think proper to avail themselves of it, from
union with such as should refuse to do so, and the formation of an
amended or "more perfect union" with one another, is to regard it as a
provision for the continuance of the old Union, or Confederation, under
altered conditions, by the majority which should accede to them, with a
recognition of the right of the recusant minority to withdraw, secede,
or stand aloof. The idea of compelling any State or States to enter into
or to continue in union with the others by _coercion_, is as absolutely
excluded under the one supposition as under the other--with reference to
one State or a minority of States, as well as with regard to a majority.
The article declares that "the ratification of the Conventions of nine
States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this
Constitution"--not between all, but--"_between the States so ratifying
the same_." It is submitted whether a fuller justification of this right
of the nine States to form a new Government is not found in the fact of
the sovereignty in each of them, making them "a law unto themselves,"
and therefore the final judge of what the necessities of each community
demand.

Here--although, perhap