ble
and sacred. Virginia did so, we all remember. She made a
compact to reserve, expressly, certain rights.... She most
cautiously and guardedly reserved and secured those
invaluable, inestimable rights and privileges which no
people, inspired with the least glow of patriotic liberty,
ever did, or ever can, abandon. She is called upon now to
abandon them, and dissolve that compact which secured them
to her.... Will she do it? This is the question. If you
intend to reserve your unalienable rights, you must have the
most express stipulation; for, if implication be allowed,
you are ousted of those rights. If the people do not think
it necessary to reserve them, they will be supposed to be
given up.... If you give up these powers, without a bill of
rights, you will exhibit the most absurd thing to mankind
that ever the world saw,--a government that has abandoned
all its powers,--the powers of direct taxation, the sword,
and the purse. You have disposed of them to Congress,
without a bill of rights, without check, limitation, or
control. And still you have checks and guards; still you
keep barriers--pointed where? Pointed against your weakened,
prostrated, enervated, state government! You have a bill of
rights to defend you against the state government--which is
bereaved of all power, and yet you have none against
Congress--though in full and exclusive possession of all
power. You arm yourselves against the weak and defenceless,
and expose yourselves naked to the armed and powerful. Is
not this a conduct of unexampled absurdity?"[381]

Again and again, in response to his demand for an express assertion,
in the instrument itself, of the rights of individuals and of States,
he was told that every one of those rights was secured, since it was
naturally and fairly implied. "Even say," he rejoined, "it is a
natural implication,--why not give us a right ... in express terms, in
language that could not admit of evasions or subterfuges? If they can
use implication for us, they can also use implication against us. We
are giving power; they are getting power; judge, then, on which side
the implication will be used." "Implication is dangerous, because it
is unbounded; if it be admitted at all, and no limits prescribed, it
admits of the utmost extension." "The existence of powers is
sufficiently estab