the former proprietors of it, there can, certainly, be nothing more obvious, than that from the general nature of the instrument no power can result to diminish and give away, to strangers, any proportion of the rights of the original partners.  If such a power exist, it must be found, then, in the particular provisions in the Constitution.  The question now arising is, in which of these provisions is given the power to admit new States, to be created in territories beyond the limits of the old United States.  If it exist anywhere, it is either in the third section of the fourth article of the Constitution, or in the treaty-making power.  If it result from neither of these, it is not pretended to be found anywhere else.

That part of the third section of the fourth article, on which the advocates of this bill rely, is the following:  “New States may be admitted by the Congress, into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress.”

I know, Mr. Speaker, that the first clause of this paragraph has been read, with all the superciliousness of a grammarian’s triumph—­“New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union,”—­accompanied with this most consequential inquiry:  “Is not this a new State to be admitted?  And is there not here an express authority?” I have no doubt this is a full and satisfactory argument to every one who is content with the mere colors and superficies of things.  And if we were now at the bar of some stall-fed justice, the inquiry would insure the victory to the maker of it, to the manifest delight of the constables and suitors of his court.  But, sir, we are now before the tribunal of the whole American people; reasoning concerning their liberties, their rights, their Constitution.  These are not to be made the victims of the inevitable obscurity of general terms; nor the sport of verbal criticism.  The question is concerning the intent of the American people, the proprietors of the old United States, when they agreed to this article.  Dictionaries and spelling-books are here of no authority.  Neither Johnson, nor Walker, nor Webster, nor Dilworth, has any voice in this matter.  Sir, the question concerns the proportion of power reserved, by this Constitution, to every State in this Union.  Have the three branches of this government a right, at will, to weaken and out-weigh the influence, respectively secured to each State in this compact, by introducing, at pleasure, new partners, situate beyond the old limits of the United States?  The question has not relation merely to New Orleans.  The great objection is to the principle of the bill.  If this principle be admitted, the whole space of Louisiana, greater, it is said, than the entire extent of the old United States, will