This consideration has the more
weight, as the gradual accumulation of public improvements at the
stationary residence of the government would be both too great a public
pledge to be left in the hands of a single State, and would create so
many obstacles to a removal of the government, as still further to
abridge its necessary independence. The extent of this federal district
is sufficiently circumscribed to satisfy every jealousy of an opposite
nature. And as it is to be appropriated to this use with the consent of
the State ceding it; as the State will no doubt provide in the compact
for the rights and the consent of the citizens inhabiting it; as the
inhabitants will find sufficient inducements of interest to become
willing parties to the cession; as they will have had their voice in the
election of the government which is to exercise authority over them; as
a municipal legislature for local purposes, derived from their own
suffrages, will of course be allowed them; and as the authority of the
legislature of the State, and of the inhabitants of the ceded part of
it, to concur in the cession, will be derived from the whole people of
the State in their adoption of the Constitution, every imaginable
objection seems to be obviated.
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