ent fate? Such,
indeed, is the indefinite nature of language, the ever-varying character
of human concerns, and the subtlety of the human intellect, that it is
utterly impossible to pen a constitution on which numerous questions
would not arise, which no sagacity of man could foresee, and which his
language is too vague to provide for.

Constitutional questions then must arise, and the true point of inquiry
is, whether our constitution meant that they should be finally settled,
or whether they are to remain suspended between heaven and earth, until
they are compelled to make their appearance by the necromancy of legal
subtlety, or occasionally laid in the Red Sea.

But the evil would not stop with the federal government. We know that
each state has also its own constitution, and that if their legislatures
or executives transcend their powers, their acts, by the doctrines we
are considering, are utterly void. They cannot exceed the limits of
their charter, and those limits they have no exclusive right to define.
Who that has attended the deliberations of a state legislature, and
remarked the frequent recurrence of constitutional questions about their
powers, but must see that there is scarcely any law concerning property,
or office, or crime, on which ingenuity may not raise a doubt respecting
either the letter or spirit of the constitution? And the same
uncertainty and want of uniformity which would arise in the federal
government, would arise in a much greater ratio in that of a state; so
that no man could say certainly what were his duties or his rights. If
such a state of things may now ensue, how would it be when the
population of a single state should amount to several millions, and when
the spirit of litigation, united with the extension of legal science,
would give more than Norman acuteness to our constitutional lawyers?
When that era shall arrive, if this quibbling spirit that is now so
rife, shall not receive a timely check, where is the law, whose
authority may not be questioned? Now is the time to arrest it, before
our habits become indurated, and while our national character has that
ductility which the changes our country is ever undergoing, naturally
produces. Whoever is capable of taking a wide survey of human affairs,
and of comparing ages and nations, must perceive that every generation
of the civilized world is becoming more and more metaphysical--that the
understanding is more appealed to, and has g