e 1, it is provided that the migration
or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall
think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the
year 1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not
exceeding $10 for each person.
By Article III, section 3, clause 1, new States may be admitted by
Congress into the Union, but that no new State shall be formed within
the jurisdiction of another State, nor any State be formed by the
junction of two or more States or parts of States without the consent of
the legislature of the States concerned as well as of the United States.
And by the next clause of the same article and section power is vested
in Congress to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations
respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United.
States, with a proviso that nothing in the Constitution shall be so
construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or of any
particular State.
By Article IV, section 4, the United States guarantee to every State a
republican form of government and engage to protect each of them against
invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive
when the legislature can not be convened, against domestic violence.
Of the other parts of the Constitution relating to power, some form
restraints on the exercise of the powers granted to Congress and others
on the exercise of the powers remaining to the States. The object in
both instances is to draw more completely the line between the two
governments and also to prevent abuses by either. Other parts operate
like conventional stipulations between the States, abolishing between
them all distinctions applicable to foreign powers and securing to the
inhabitants of each State all the rights and immunities of citizens in
the several States.
By the fifth article it is provided that Congress, whenever two-thirds
of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments, or, on
the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States,
shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case
shall be valid as a part of the Constitution when ratified by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions
in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode may be proposed
by Congress: _Provided_, That no State, without its consent, shall be
deprived of its equal vote in the Sena
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