le for ever the meaning of this phrase, which, by a
mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a
claim of universal power. For in the phrase, 'to lay taxes, to pay the
debts and provide for the general welfare,' it is a mere question of
syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first, or
are distinct and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided
by the exact definition of powers immediately following. It is fortunate
for another reason, as the States, in conceding the power, will modify
it, either by requiring the federal ratio of expense in each State, or
otherwise, so as to secure us against its partial exercise. Without this
caution, intrigue, negotiation, and the barter of votes might become as
habitual in Congress, as they are in those legislatures which have the
appointment of officers, and which, with us, is called 'logging,' the
term of the farmers for their exchanges of aid in rolling together the
logs of their newly cleared grounds. Three of our papers have presented
us the copy of an act of the legislature of New York, which, if it has
really passed, will carry us back to the times of the darkest bigotry
and barbarism to find a parallel. Its purport is, that all those who
shall hereafter join in communion with the religious sect of Shaking
Quakers, shall be deemed civilly dead, their marriages dissolved, and
all their children and property taken out of their hands. This act being
published nakedly in the papers, without the usual signatures, or any
history of the circumstances of its passage, I am not without a hope it
may have been a mere abortive attempt. It contrasts singularly with a
cotemporary vote of the Pennsylvania legislature, who, on a proposition
to make the belief in a God a necessary qualification for office,
rejected it by a great majority, although assuredly there was not a
single atheist in their body. And you remember to have heard, that, when
the act for religious freedom was before the Virginia Assembly, a motion
to insert the name of Jesus Christ before the phrase, 'the author of our
holy religion,' which stood in the bill, was rejected, although that was
the creed of a great majority of them.

I have been charmed to see that a Presidential election now produces
scarcely any agitation. On Mr. Madison's election there was little, on
Monroe's all but none. In Mr. Adams's time and mine, parties were so
nearly balanced as to make the stru