cter
confers and all that they may claim as citizens of the United States,
but in no case can the same persons at the same time act as the citizen
of two separate States, and he is therefore positively precluded from
any interference with the reserved powers of any State but that of
which he is for the time being a citizen. He may, indeed, offer to the
citizens of other States his advice as to their management, and the
form in which it is tendered is left to his own discretion and sense of
propriety. It may be observed, however, that organized associations of
citizens requiring compliance with their wishes too much resemble the
recommendations of Athens to her allies, supported by an armed and
powerful fleet. It was, indeed, to the ambition of the leading States
of Greece to control the domestic concerns of the others that the
destruction of that celebrated Confederacy, and subsequently of all its
members, is mainly to be attributed, and it is owing to the absence of
that spirit that the Helvetic Confederacy has for so many years been
preserved. Never has there been seen in the institutions of the separate
members of any confederacy more elements of discord. In the principles
and forms of government and religion, as well as in the circumstances
of the several Cantons, so marked a discrepancy was observable as to
promise anything but harmony in their intercourse or permanency in their
alliance, and yet for ages neither has been interrupted. Content with
the positive benefits which their union produced, with the independence
and safety from foreign aggression which it secured, these sagacious
people respected the institutions of each other, however repugnant to
their own principles and prejudices.

Our Confederacy, fellow-citizens, can only be preserved by the same
forbearance. Our citizens must be content with the exercise of the
powers with which the Constitution clothes them. The attempt of those
of one State to control the domestic institutions of another can only
result in feelings of distrust and jealousy, the certain harbingers of
disunion, violence, and civil war, and the ultimate destruction of our
free institutions. Our Confederacy is perfectly illustrated by the terms
and principles governing a common copartnership. There is a fund of
power to be exercised under the direction of the joint councils of
the allied members, but that which has been reserved by the individual
members is intangible by the common Gover