the seat of government of the United States. This provision has made the Congress of the United States the exclusive sovereign of the District of Columbia, which it governs in its capacity of the legislature of the Union. It enabled Washington to found the city which bears his name; towards which, whatever may be the claims of local attachment, every American who can discern the connection between the honor, the renown, and the welfare of his country, and the dignity, convenience, and safety of its government, must turn with affection and pride. With respect to a regular time of meeting, no instructions had been given to the committee of detail; but they inserted in their draft of the Constitution a clause which required the legislature to assemble on the first Monday of December in every year. There was, however, a great difference of opinion as to the expediency of designating any time in the Constitution, and as to the particular period adopted in the report. But as it was generally agreed that Congress ought to assemble annually, the provision which now stands in the Constitution, which requires annual sessions, and establishes the first Monday in December as the time of their commencement, unless a different day shall be appointed by law, was adopted as a compromise of different views.[210] FOOTNOTES: [130] The first draft of the Constitution, reported by the committee of detail, will be found in the Appendix. [131] A general instruction had been given to report "certain qualifications of property and citizenship," for the executive, the judiciary, and the members of both houses of Congress. [132] It is only necessary to mention the names of Hamilton, Wilson, Robert Morris, and Fitzsimmons, to show the entire impracticability of a rule that would have excluded all persons of _foreign birth_ from being electors, or from being elected to office. [133] I have called the naturalization power a _practical_ control upon the States in the matter of suffrage. It is indirect, but it is effectual; for I believe that no State has ever gone so far as, by express statutory or constitutional provision, to admit to the right of voting persons of foreign birth who are not naturalized citizens of the United States. [134] Art. VI. Sect. 2 of the reported draft. [135] Art. IV. Sect. 2 of the reported draft. [136] New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Georgia alone voted to retain it. Elliot, V. 404. [137] The Constitution of Pennsylvania had given to foreigners, after two years' residence, all the rights of citizens. There were similar provisions in nearly all of the States.