Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/453

.], without any real responsibility? Will you be safe when you trust men at Philadelphia with power to make any law that will enable them to carry their acts into execution? Will not the members of Congress have the same passions which other rulers have had? They will not be superior to the frailties of human nature. However cautious you may be in the selection of your representatives, it will be dangerous to trust them with such unbounded powers. Shall we be told, when about to grant such illimitable authority, that it will never be exercised!

I conjure you once more to remember the admonition of that sage man who told you that, when you give power, you know not what you give. I know the absolute necessity of an energetic government. But is it consistent with any principle of prudence or good policy to grant unlimited, unbounded authority, which is so totally unnecessary that gentlemen say it will never be exercised? But gentlemen say that we must make experiments. A wonderful and unheard-of experiment it will be, to give unlimited power unnecessarily! I admit my inferiority in point of historical knowledge; but I believe no man can produce an instance of an unnecessary and unlimited power, given to a body independent of the legislature, within a particular district. Let any man in this Convention show me an instance of such separate and different powers of legislation in the same country—show me an instance where a part of the community was independent of the whole.

The people within that place, and the strongholds, may be excused from all the burdens imposed on the rest of the society, and may enjoy exclusive emoluments, to the great injury of the rest of the people. But gentlemen say that the power will not be abused. They ought to show that it is necessary. All their powers may be fully carried into execution, without this exclusive authority in the ten miles square. The sweeping clause will fully enable them to do what they please. What could the most extravagant and boundless imagination ask, but power to do every thing? I have reason to suspect ambitious grasps at power. The experience of the world teaches me the Jeopardy of giving enormous power. Strike this clause out of the form of the government, and how will it stand? Congress will still have power, by the sweeping clause, to make laws within that