PERHAPS, also, an answer may be found without searching
beyond the principles of the compact itself. It has been heretofore
noted among the defects of the Confederation, that in many of the States
it had received no higher sanction than a mere legislative ratification.
The principle of reciprocality seems to require that its obligation on
the other States should be reduced to the same standard. A compact
between independent sovereigns, founded on ordinary acts of legislative
authority, can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty
between the parties. It is an established doctrine on the subject of
treaties, that all the articles are mutually conditions of each other;
that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and
that a breach, committed by either of the parties, absolves the others,
and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated
and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate
truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular
States to a dissolution of the federal pact, will not the complaining
parties find it a difficult task to answer the MULTIPLIED and IMPORTANT
infractions with which they may be confronted? The time has been when it
was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas which this paragraph exhibits.
Pages:
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460