Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/129

112 heretofore considered as the servants of the people." Instead of using the same language in 1803, he accepted his colleague’s views as to the extent of the treaty-making power, and added reasoning of his own.  If the spirit of New England Calvinism contained an element of self-deceit, Virginia metaphysics occasionally ran into slippery evasion, as the argument of Nicholas showed.  He evaded a straightforward opinion on every point at issue.  The treaty making power was undefined, he thought, but not unlimited; the general limitations of the Constitution applied to it, not the special limitations of power; and of course the treaty must be judged by its conformity with the general meaning of the compact.  He then explained away the apparent difficulties in the case.  "If the third article of the treaty," said he, "is an engagement to incorporate the territory of Louisiana into the Union of the United States and to make it a State, it cannot be considered as an unconstitutional exercise of the treaty-making power, for it will not be asserted by any rational man that the territory is incorporated as a State by the treaty itself." This incorporation was stipulated to be done "according to the principles of the Constitution," and the States might do it or not, at their discretion: if it could not be done constitutionally, it might be done by amendment.

Nothing could be more interesting than to see the discomfort with which the champions of States-rights tossed themselves from one horn to the other