Page:Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated.djvu/10



The crisis has come, wben the following work "may do the state some service."

The Missouri Question is probably not yet closed. The principle, on which it turns, is certainly not settled. Further attempts are to be made to wrest from the new states, about to enter into the American confederacy, the power of regulating their own concerns.—The Tariff question is again to be agitated.—It is time to bring the policy and the power of a legislature's interfering with the judicial functions to the bar of publick opinion.—The usurpation of a federal power over roads and canals is again to be attempted, and again to be reprobated.—That gigantick institution, the Bank of the United States, which, while yet in the green tree, was proclaimed by the republicans a breach of the constitution, "stands now upon its bond;" but that charter, bad as it is, has been justified by the supreme court of the United States, on principles so bold and alarming, that no man who loves the constitution can fold his arms in apathy upon the subject. Those principles, so boldly uttered from the highest judicial tribunal in the United States, are calculated to give the tone to an acquiescent people, to change the whole face of our government, and to generate a thousand measures, which the framers of the constitution never anticipated. That decision

Against such a decision, it becomes every man, who values the constitution, to raise his voice.