government; that “requests and applications” were made to the Executive to fulfill the guaranties of the Constitution which impose on the Federal Government the obligation to protect and defend each State of the Union against “domestic violence and foreign invasion,” but the Executive was at no time convinced that the casus foederis had arisen which required the interposition of the military or naval power in the controversy which unhappily existed between the people of Rhode Island.  I was in no manner prevented from so interfering by the inquiry whether Rhode Island existed as an independent State of the Union under a charter granted at an early period by the Crown of Great Britain or not.  It was enough for the Executive to know that she was recognized as a sovereign State by Great Britain by the treaty of 1783; that at a later day she had in common with her sister States poured out her blood and freely expended her treasure in the War of the Revolution; that she was a party to the Articles of Confederation; that at an after period she adopted the Constitution of the United States as a free, independent, and republican State; and that in this character she has always possessed her full quota of representation in the Senate and House of Representatives; and that up to a recent day she has conducted all her domestic affairs and fulfilled all her obligations as a member of the Union, in peace and war, under her charter government, as it is denominated by the resolution of the House of the 23d March.  I must be permitted to disclaim entirely and unqualifiedly the right on the part of the Executive to make any real or supposed defects existing in any State constitution or form of government the pretext for a failure to enforce the laws or the guaranties of the Constitution of the United States in reference to any such State.  I utterly repudiate the idea, in terms as emphatic as I can employ, that those laws are not to be enforced or those guaranties complied with because the President may believe that the right of suffrage or any other great popular right is either too restricted or too broadly enlarged.  I also with equal strength resist the idea that it falls within the Executive competency to decide in controversies of the nature of that which existed in Rhode Island on which side is the majority of the people or as to the extent of the rights of a mere numerical majority.  For the Executive to assume such a power would be to assume a power of the most dangerous character.  Under such assumptions the States of this Union would have no security for peace or tranquillity, but might be converted into the mere instruments of Executive will.  Actuated by selfish purposes, he might become the great agitator, fomenting assaults upon the State constitutions and declaring the majority of to-day to be the minority of to-morrow, and the minority, in its turn, the majority, before whose decrees the established order of things in the State should be subverted.  Revolution, civil commotion, and bloodshed would be the inevitable consequences.  The provision in the Constitution intended for the security of the States would thus be turned into the instrument of their destruction.  The President would become, in fact, the great constitution maker for the States, and all power would be vested in his hands.