States as an agent to consummate the object, there could hardly have been higher assumption or louder vaunting.  The sole object of having such a District was in effect totally perverted in the resolution of Mr. Clay, and in the discussions of the entire southern delegation, upon its passage.  Instead of taking the ground, that the benefit of the whole Union was the sole object of a federal district, that it was designed to guard and promote the interests of all the states, and that it was to be legislated over for this end—­the resolution proceeds upon an hypothesis totally the reverse.  It takes a single point of state policy, and exalts it above NATIONAL interests, utterly overshadowing them; abrogating national rights; making void a clause of the Constitution; humbling the general government into a subject—­crouching for favors to a superior, and that too on its own exclusive jurisdiction.  All the attributes of sovereignty vested in Congress by the Constitution it impales upon the point of an alleged implication.  And this is Mr. Clay’s peace-offering, to appease the lust of power and the ravenings of state encroachment!  A “compromise,” forsooth! that sinks the general Government on its own territory into a mere colony, with Virginia and Maryland for its “mother country!” It is refreshing to turn from these shallow, distorted constructions and servile cringings, to the high bearing of other southern men in other times; men, who in their character of legislators and lawyers, disdained to accommodate their interpretations of constitutions and charters to geographical lines, or to bend them to the purposes of a political canvass.  In the celebrated case of Cohens vs. the State of Virginia, Hon. William Pinkney, late of Baltimore, and Hon. Walter Jones, of Washington city, with other eminent constitutional lawyers, prepared an elaborate written opinion, from which the following is an extract:  “Nor is there any danger to be apprehended from allowing to Congressional legislation with regard to the District of Columbia, its FULLEST EFFECT.  Congress is responsible to the States, and to the people for that legislation.  It is in truth the legislation of the states over a district placed under their control for their own benefit, not for that of the District, except as the prosperity of the District is involved, and necessary to the general advantage.”—­[Life of Pinkney, p. 612.]

The profound legal opinion, from which this is an extract, was elaborated at great length many years since, by a number of the most distinguished lawyers in the United States, whose signatures are appended to it.  It is specific and to the point.  It asserts, 1st, that Congressional legislation over the District, is “the legislation of the States and the people,” (not of two states, and a mere fraction of the people;) 2d.  “Over a District placed under their control,”