butes not specifically granted or specially enumerated. Nevertheless Virginia, through abundant caution when she fixed her seal to this Constitution, did so with the express declaration, in behalf of her people, that the powers granted under it might be resumed by them whenever the same should be perverted to their injury or oppression; that "no right of any denomination given by that instrument could be cancelled, abridged, or modified by the Congress, by the Senate and House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given for those purposes."[1] With this agreement, with a solemn appeal to the "Searcher of all hearts" for the purity of their intentions, our delegates, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, proceeded to accept and to ratify the Constitution for the Government of the United States.
Thus the Government at Washington was created. But it did not go into operation until the other States—parties to the contract—had accepted by their act of signature and tacit agreement the conditions which Virginia required to be understood as the terms on which she accepted the Constitution, and agreed to become one of the United States. Thus these conditions became, to all intents and purposes, a part of that instrument itself; for it is a rule of law and a principle of right laid down, well understood, and universally acknowledged, that if in any compact between several parties any one of-them be permitted to enter into it on a condition, that condition inures alike to all.
Notwithstanding the purity of motive and singleness of purpose which moved Virginia to become one of the United States, sectional interests wore developed, and the seeds of faction, strife, and discord appeared in the very convention which adopted the Constitution. At that time African negroes wore bought and sold and held in slavery in all the States. They had been brought here by the Crown, and forced upon Virginia when she was in the Colonial state, in spite of her oft-repeated petitions and remonstrances; and now since she—with others—were independent and masters of themselves, they desired to put an end forthwith to this traffic. To this the North objected, on the ground that her people were
- ↑ Proceedings of the Va. Convention, 1788, page 28, Code of Va., 1860.
