government of the United States; and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state, in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards, and other needful buildings."
The indispensable necessity of complete authority at the seat of government, carries its own evidence with it. It is a power exercised by every legislature of the union, I might say of the world, by virtue of its general supremacy. Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted, and its proceedings be interrupted with impunity, but a dependence of the members of the general government on the state comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonourable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the confederacy. This consideration has the more weight, as the gradual accumulation of public improvements at the stationary residence of the government, would be both too great a public pledge to be left in the hands of a single state, and would create so many obstacles to a removal of the government, as still further to abridge its necessary independence. The extent of this federal district, is sufficiently circumscribed to satisfy every jealousy of an opposite nature. And as it is to be appropriated to this use, with the consent of the state ceding it; as the state will no doubt provide in the compact for the rights, and the consent of the citizens inhabiting it; as the inhabitants will find sufficient inducements of interest, to become willing parties to the cession; as they will have had their voice in the election of the government, which is to exercise authority over them; as a municipal legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed them; and as the authority of the legislature of the state, and of the inhabitants of the ceded part of it, to concur in the cession, will be derived from the whole people of the state, in their adoption of the constitution, every imaginable objection seems to be obviated.
