But here comes a dilemma.  Suppose the legislation of those states should steer different courses—­then there would be two wakes!  Can Congress float in both?  Yea, verily!  Nothing is too hard for it!  Its obsequiousness equals its “power of legislation in all cases whatsoever.”  It can float up on the Virginia tide, and ebb down on the Maryland.  What Maryland does, Congress will do in the Maryland part.  What Virginia does, Congress will do in the Virginia part.  Though it might not always be able to run at the bidding of both at once, especially in different directions, yet if it obeyed orders cheerfully, and “kept in its place,” according to its “good faith implied,” impossibilities might not be rigidly exacted.  True, we have the highest sanction for the maxim that no man can serve two masters—­but if “corporations have no souls,” analogy would absolve Congress on that score, or at most give it only a very small soul—­not large enough to be at all in the way, as an exception to the universal rule laid down in the maxim!

In following out the absurdities of this “implied good faith,” it will be seen at once that the doctrine of Mr. Clay’s Resolution extends to all the subjects of legislation existing in Maryland and Virginia, which exist also within the District.  Every system, “institution,” law, and established usage there, is placed beyond Congressional control equally with slavery, and by the same “implied faith.”  The abolition of the lottery system in the District as an immorality, was a flagrant breach of this “good faith” to Maryland and Virginia, as the system “still continued in those states.”  So to abolish imprisonment for debt, or capital punishment, to remodel the bank system, the power of corporations, the militia law, laws of limitation, &c., in the District, unless Virginia and Maryland took the lead, would violate the “good faith implied in the cession.”

That in the acts of cession no such “good faith” was “implied” by Virginia and Maryland as is claimed in the Resolution, we argue from the fact, that in 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States all her north-west territory, with the special proviso that her citizens inhabiting that territory should “have their possessions and titles confirmed to them, and be protected in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties.” (See Journals of Congress, vol. 9, p. 63.) The cession was made in the form of a deed, and signed by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee, and James Munroe.  Many of these inhabitants held slaves. Three years after the cession, the Virginia delegation in Congress proposed the passage of an ordinance which should abolish slavery, in that territory, and declare that it should never thereafter exist there.  All the members of Congress from Virginia and Maryland voted for this ordinance.  Suppose some member of Congress had during the passage of the ordinance