bility; and that it
is a sufficient recommendation of the federal Constitution, that it
diminishes the risk of a calamity for which no possible constitution can
provide a cure.

Among the advantages of a confederate republic enumerated by
Montesquieu, an important one is, "that should a popular insurrection
happen in one of the States, the others are able to quell it. Should
abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain
sound."

7. "To consider all debts contracted, and engagements entered into,
before the adoption of this Constitution, as being no less valid
against the United States, under this Constitution, than under the
Confederation."

This can only be considered as a declaratory proposition; and may have
been inserted, among other reasons, for the satisfaction of the foreign
creditors of the United States, who cannot be strangers to the pretended
doctrine, that a change in the political form of civil society has the
magical effect of dissolving its moral obligations.

Among the lesser criticisms which have been exercised on the
Constitution, it has been remarked that the validity of engagements
ought to have been asserted in favor of the United States, as well
as against them; and in the spirit which usually characterizes little
critics, the omission has been transformed and magnified into a plot
against the national rights. The authors of this discovery may be told,
what few others need to be informed of, that as engagements are in
their nature reciprocal, an assertion of their validity on one side,
necessarily involves a validity on the other side; and that as the
article is merely declaratory, the establishment of the principle in one
case is sufficient for every case. They may be further told, that
every constitution must limit its precautions to dangers that are
not altogether imaginary; and that no real danger can exist that the
government would DARE, with, or even without, this constitutional
declaration before it, to remit the debts justly due to the public, on
the pretext here condemned.

8. "To provide for amendments to be ratified by three fourths of the
States under two exceptions only."

That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but
be foreseen. It was requisite, therefore, that a mode for introducing
them should be provided. The mode preferred by the convention seems to
be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards equally against that
extr