authorities, which have been heretofore delegated to the federal head: but it would be inconsistent with all the principles of good government, to intrust it with those additional powers which even the moderate and more rational adversaries of the proposed constitution admit, ought to reside in the United States. If that plan should not be adopted; and if the necessity of union should be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those men, who may indulge magnificent schemes of personal aggrandizement from its dissolution; the probability would be, that we should run into the project of conferring supplementary powers upon congress, as they are now constituted. And either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness of its structure, will moulder into pieces, in spite of our ill judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force and energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty; and thus entail upon our posterity, one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus we should create in reality that very tyranny, which the adversaries of the new constitution either are, or affect to be, solicitous to avert.
It has not a little contributed to the infirmities of the existing federal system, that it never had a ratification by the people. Resting on no better foundation than the consent of the several legislatures, it has been exposed to frequent and intricate questions concerning the validity of its powers; and has, in some instances, given birth to the enormous doctrine of a right of legislative repeal. Owing its ratification to the law of a state, it has been contended, that the same authority might repeal the law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy it may be to maintain, that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature, proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid
