ing less than the power to create in foreign countries, new political sovereignties, and to divest the old United States of a proportion of their political sovereignty, in favor of such foreigner. It is a power, which, in the opinion of your Committee, no wise people ever would have delegated, and which, they are persuaded, the people of the United States, and certainly, the people of Massachusetts, never did delegate. The proportion of the political weight of each foreign State, composing this union, depends upon the number of the States, which have a voice under the compact. This number, the Constitution permits Congress to multiply, at pleasure, within the limits of the original States, observing, only, the expressed limitations, in the Constitution. To pass these limitations and admit States, beyond the ancient boundaries, is, in the opinion of your Committee, an usurpation, as dangerous as it is manifest, inasmuch as these exterior States, after being admitted on an equal footing with the original States, may, and as they multiply, certainly will become, in fact, the arbiters of the destinies of the nation; by availing themselves of the contrariety of interests and views which in such a confederacy of States necessarily arise, they hold the balance among the respective parties and govern the States, constitutionally composing the Union, by throwing their weight into whatever scale is most conformable to the ambition or projects of such foreign States.
Your Committee cannot, therefore, but look with extreme regret and reprobation upon the admission of the territory of Louisiana to an equal footing with the original and constitutionally admitted States; and they cannot but consider the principle, asserted by this admission, as an usurpation of power, portending the most serious consequences to the perpetuation of this Union and the liberties of the American people.[1]
Although the character of this usurpation and its ultimate consequences ought, naturally, to excite an extreme degree of alarm in this quarter of the country, as it indicates that new and unconstitutional arbiters, remote from our interests and ignorant of them, are admitted into the Union, yet the nature of the remedy is, in the opinion of your Committee, a subject of much more difficulty than the certainty of the mischief.
- ↑ For action of Massachusetts in 1804 and 1809 in consequence of the annexation of Louisiana, see ante, 27, and note.
