But here its power ended.
Its resolution could only bind _itself_. It had no authority to bind a
subsequent Congress. Could the members of one Congress say to those of
another, because we do not choose to exercise all the authority vested
in us by the Constitution, therefore you _shall_ not? This would, have
been a prohibition to do what the Constitution gives power to do. Each
successive Congress would still have gone to THE CONSTITUTION for its
power, brushing away in its course the cobwebs stretched across its path
by the officiousness of an impertinent predecessor. Again, the
legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, had no power to bind Congress,
either by an express or an implied pledge, never to abolish slavery in
the District. Those legislatures had no power to bind _themselves_ never
to abolish slavery within their own territories--the ceded parts
included. Where then would they get power to bind _another_ not to do
what they had no power to bind _themselves_ not to do? If a legislature
could not in this respect control the successive legislatures of its own
State, could it control the successive Congresses of the United States?

But perhaps we shall be told, that the "implied faith" of Maryland and
Virginia was _not_ that Congress should _never_ abolish slavery in the
District, but that it should not do it until _they_ had done it within
their bounds! Verily this "faith" comes little short of the faith of
miracles! Maryland and Virginia have "good faith" that Congress will not
abolish until _they_ do; and then just as "good faith" that Congress
_will_ abolish _when_ they do! Excellently accommodated! Did those
states suppose that Congress would legislate over the national domain,
for Maryland and Virginia alone? And who, did they suppose, would be
judges in the matter?--themselves merely? or the whole Union?

This "good faith implied in the cession" is no longer of doubtful
interpretation. The principle at the bottom of it, when fairly stated,
is this:--That the Government of the United States are bound in "good
faith" to do in the District of Columbia, without demurring, just what
and when, Maryland and Virginia do within their own bounds. In short,
that the general government is eased of all the burdens of legislation
within its exclusive jurisdiction, save that of hiring a scrivener to
copy off the acts of the Maryland and Virginia legislatures as fast as
they are passed, and engross them, under the title of