Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/60

 out to be no nation at all, but was then admitted by himself, to have been a mere Confederacy; and no sooner did he create a second Nation out of this confederation, to destroy the first, than he now tells us, that this second we can scarcely call a nation.—Although consistency is not ever conclusive evidence of truth, yet the want of consistency has always been regarded as an admission of error, somewhere. Whether this error consists, in inferring the existence of the first Nation, in asserting that of the second, or in announcing that this last scarcely deserved to be called a nation, I leave to him and others to determine. At the moment when he is thus depreciating the old Confederation, this author seems much disposed, to bestow upon it many and far greater powers, than its warmest friends every claimed for it. Thus, he says, that it was formed for the purpose of conducting "all our foreign relations." This is certainly not so. To say nothing of other subjects; with the regulation of the great subject of foreign Commerce, which, in modern times, involves by far the most interesting of all the foreign relations of every States, the old Confederacy had nothing to do, except what might be effected by Treaties. At that day, however, commercial Treaties were rare, and the terms upon which such Treaties might be concluded by Congress, were much restricted, by the ninth Article of the Confederation, so that the whole power of regulating their own domestic Trade and Navigation, and almost all their foreign Commerce, devolved upon the several States exclusively. So true is this, that the manner in which this power was constantly exercised by them, was one of the great causes assigned for the amendment of the old Articles of Confederation by the present Federal Constitution.

Nor is this all. The Proclamation, in speaking of the Articles of Confederation, proceeds to say, that in that instrument "is found an Article, which declares, that every State shall abide by the determination of Congress on all questions, which by that Confederation should be submitted to them." And immediately adds, "under the Confederation, then, no State could legally annul a decision of the Congress, or refuse to submit to its execution."