lonies: "It has been urged
with great vehemence against us," he says, "and it seems to be thought
their FORT by our adversaries, that a power of regulation is a power
of legislation; and a power of legislation, if constitutional, must be
universal and supreme, in the utmost sense of the word. It is
therefore concluded that the colonies, by acknowledging the power of
regulation, acknowledged every other power."

This sophism imposed upon a portion of the patriots of that day. Chief
Justice Marshall, in his life of Washington, says "that many of the
best-informed men in Massachusetts had perhaps adopted the opinion of
the parliamentary right of internal government over the colonies;"
"that the English statute book furnishes many instances of its
exercise;" "that in no case recollected, was their authority openly
controverted;" and "that the General Court of Massachusetts, on a late
occasion, openly recognised the principle." (Marsh. Wash., v. 2, p.
75, 76.)

But the more eminent men of Massachusetts rejected it; and another
patriot of the time employs the instance to warn us of "the stealth
with which oppression approaches," and "the enormities towards which
precedents travel." And the people of the United States, as we have
seen, appealed to the last argument, rather than acquiesce in their
authority. Could it have been the purpose of Washington and his
illustrious associates, by the use of ambiguous, equivocal, and
expansive words, such as "rules," "regulations," "territory," to
re-establish in the Constitution of their country that _fort_ which
had been prostrated amid the toils and with the sufferings and
sacrifices of seven years of war? Are these words to be understood as
the Norths, the Grenvilles, Hillsboroughs, Hutchinsons, and
Dunmores--in a word, as George III would have understood them--or are
we to look for their interpretation to Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams,
to Jefferson, and Jay, and Dickinson; to the sage Franklin, or to
Hamilton, who from his early manhood was engaged in combating British
constructions of such words? We know that the resolution of Congress
of 1780 contemplated that the new States to be formed under their
recommendation were to have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom,
and independence, as the old. That every resolution, cession, compact,
and ordinance, of the States, observed the same liberal principle.
That the Union of the Constitution is a union formed of equal States;
and tha