Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/208

§ 1324. As there are incidental powers belonging to the United States in their sovereign capacity, so there are incidental rights, obligations, and duties. It may be asked, how these are to be ascertained. In the first place, as to duties and obligations of a public nature, they are to be ascertained by the law of nations, to which, on asserting our independence, we necessarily became subject. In regard to municipal rights and obligations, whatever differences of opinion may arise in regard to the extent, to which the common law attaches to the national government, no one can doubt, that it must, and ought to be resorted to, in order to ascertain many of its rights and obligations. Thus, when a contract is entered into by the United States, we naturally and necessarily resort to the common law, to interpret its terms, and ascertain its obligations. The same general rights, duties, and limitations, which the common law attaches to contracts of a similar character between private individuals, are applied to the contracts of the government. Thus, if the United States become the holder of a bill of exchange, they are bound to the same diligence, as to giving notice, in order to

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preserve, and perpetuate domestic peace, and the security of property, and the reasonable enjoyment of private rights, and personal liberty? If a state is to be torn into factions, and civil wars, every eleven years, is not the whole Union to become a common sufferer? How, and when are such wars to terminate? Are the insurgents to meet victory or defeat? Has not history established the melancholy truth, that constant wars lead to military dictatorship, and despotism, and are inconsistent with the free spirit of republican governments? If the tranquility of the Union is to be disturbed every eleventh year by a civil war, what repose can there be for the citizens in their ordinary pursuits? Will they not soon become tired of a republican government, which invites to such eternal contests, ending in blood, and murder, and rapine? One cannot but feel far more sympathy with the opinion of Mr. Jefferson, in the same letter, in which he expounds the great political maxim, "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people." 2 Jefferson's Corresp. 276.