this stipulation," replied Randolph, "as a part of the price of the territory. It was a condition which the party ceding had a right to require, and to which we had a right to assent. The right to acquire involves the right to give the equivalent demanded." Randolph did not further illustrate this sweeping principle of implied power.
After the subject had been treated by speakers of less weight, Roger Griswold of Connecticut took the floor. So long as his party had been in office, the vigor of the Constitution had found no warmer friend than he; but believing New England to have fallen at the mercy of Virginia, he was earnest to save her from the complete extinction which he thought near at hand. Griswold could not deny that the Constitution gave the power to acquire territory: his Federalist principles were too fresh to dispute such an inherent right; and Gouverneur Morris, as extreme a Federalist as himself, whose words had been used in the Constitution, averred that he knew in 1788 as well as he knew in 1803, that all North America must at length be annexed, and that it would have been Utopian to restrain the movement.[1] This was old Federalist doctrine, resting on "inherent rights," on nationality and broad construction,—the Federalism of President Washington, which the Republican party from the beginning denounced as monarchical. Griswold would not turn his back on it; he still took
- ↑ Morris to H. W. Livingston, Nov. 25, 1803. Writings of Gouverneur Morris, iii. 185.
