Another absurdity of this “implied faith” dogma is, that where there was no power to exact an express pledge, there was none to demand an implied one, and where there was no power to give the one, there was none to give the other.  We have shown already that Congress could not have accepted the cession with such a condition.  To have signed away a part of its constitutional grant of power would have been a breach of the Constitution.  The Congress which accepted the cession was competent to pass a resolution pledging itself not to use all the power over the District committed to it by the Constitution.  But here its power ended.  Its resolution could only bind itself.  It had no authority to bind a subsequent Congress.  Could the members of one Congress say to those of another, because we do not choose to exercise all the authority vested in us by the Constitution, therefore you shall not?  This would, have been a prohibition to do what the Constitution gives power to do.  Each successive Congress would still have gone to THE CONSTITUTION for its power, brushing away in its course the cobwebs stretched across its path by the officiousness of an impertinent predecessor.  Again, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, had no power to bind Congress, either by an express or an implied pledge, never to abolish slavery in the District.  Those legislatures had no power to bind themselves never to abolish slavery within their own territories—­the ceded parts included.  Where then would they get power to bind another not to do what they had no power to bind themselves not to do?  If a legislature could not in this respect control the successive legislatures of its own State, could it control the successive Congresses of the United States?

But perhaps we shall be told, that the “implied faith” of Maryland and Virginia was not that Congress should never abolish slavery in the District, but that it should not do it until they had done it within their bounds!  Verily this “faith” comes little short of the faith of miracles!  Maryland and Virginia have “good faith” that Congress will not abolish until they do; and then just as “good faith” that Congress will abolish when they do!  Excellently accommodated!  Did those states suppose that Congress would legislate over the national domain, for Maryland and Virginia alone?  And who, did they suppose, would be judges in the matter?—­themselves merely? or the whole Union?

This “good faith implied in the cession” is no longer of doubtful interpretation.  The principle at the bottom of it, when fairly stated, is this:—­That the Government of the United States are bound in “good faith” to do in the District of Columbia, without demurring, just what and when, Maryland and Virginia do within their own bounds.  In short, that the general government is eased of all the burdens of legislation within