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express between the capitols of those States and Washington city, bringing Congress from time to time its "_instructions_" from head quarters--instructions not to be disregarded without a violation of that, "good faith implied in the cession," &c. This sets in strong light the advantages of "our glorious Union," if the doctrine of Mr. Clay and the thirty-six Senators be orthodox. The people of the United States have been permitted to set up at their own expense, and on their own territory, two great _sounding boards_ called "Senate Chamber" and "Representatives' Hall," for the purpose of sending abroad "by authority" _national echoes_ of _state_ legislation!--permitted also to keep in their pay a corps of pliant _national_ musicians, with peremptory instructions to sound on any line of the staff according as Virginia and Maryland may give the _sovereign_ key note! Though this may have the seeming of mere raillery, yet an analysis of the resolution and of the discussions upon it, will convince every fair mind that it is but the legitimate carrying out of the _principle_ pervading both. They proceed virtually upon the hypothesis that the will and pleasure of Virginia and Maryland are _paramount_ to those of the _Union_. If the main design of setting apart a federal district had been originally the accommodation of Maryland, Virginia, and the south, with the United States as an _agent_ to consummate the object, there could hardly have been higher assumption or louder vaunting. The sole object of _having_ such a District was in effect totally perverted in the resolution of Mr. Clay, and in the discussions of the entire southern delegation, upon its passage. Instead of taking the ground, that the benefit of the whole Union was the sole _object_ of a federal district, that it was designed to guard and promote the interests of _all_ the states, and that it was to be legislated over _for this end_--the resolution proceeds upon an hypothesis _totally the reverse_. It takes a single point of _state_ policy, and exalts it above NATIONAL interests, utterly overshadowing them; abrogating national _rights_; making void a clause of the Constitution; humbling the general government into a subject--crouching for favors to a superior, and that too _on its own exclusive jurisdiction_. All the attributes of sovereignty vested in Congress by the Constitution it impales upon the point of an alleged _implication_. And this is Mr. Clay's pe
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