It is, we the people of the United States, for ourselves and our posterity; not for the people of Louisiana; nor for the people of New Orleans or of Canada.  None of these enter into the scope of the instrument; it embraces only “the United States of America.”  Who these are, it may seem strange in this place to inquire.  But truly, sir, our imaginations have, of late, been so accustomed to wander after new settlements to the very ends of the earth, that it will not be time ill spent to inquire what this phrase means, and what it includes.  These are not terms adopted at hazard; they have reference to a state of things existing anterior to the Constitution.  When the people of the present United States began to contemplate a severance from their parent State, it was a long time before they fixed definitely the name by which they would be designated.  In 1774, they called themselves “the Colonies and Provinces of North America.”  In 1775, “the Representatives of the United Colonies of North America.”  In the Declaration of Independence, “the Representatives of the United States of America.”  And finally, in the articles of confederation, the style of the confederacy is declared to be “the United States of America.”  It was with reference to the old articles of confederation, and to preserve the identity and established individuality of their character, that the preamble to this Constitution, not content, simply, with declaring that it is “we the people of the United States,” who enter into this compact, adds that it is for “the United States of America.”  Concerning the territory contemplated by the people of the United States, in these general terms, there can be no dispute; it is settled by the treaty of peace, and included within the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Croix, the lakes, and more precisely, so far as relates to the frontier, having relation to the present argument, within “a line to be drawn through the middle of the river Mississippi, until it intersect the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of north latitude, thence within a line drawn due east on this degree of latitude to the river Apalachicola, thence along the middle of this river to its junction with the Flint River, thence straight to the head of the St. Mary’s River, and thence down the St. Mary’s to the Atlantic Ocean.”

I have been thus particular to draw the minds of gentlemen, distinctly, to the meaning of the terms used in the preamble; to the extent which “the United States” then included; and to the fact, that neither New Orleans, nor Louisiana, was within the comprehension of the terms of this instrument.  It is sufficient for the present branch of my argument to say, that there is nothing, in the general nature of this compact, from which the power, contemplated to be exercised in this bill, results.  On the contrary, as the introduction of a new associate in political power implies, necessarily, a new division of power, and consequent diminution of the relative proportion of