After the subject had been treated by speakers of less weight, Roger Griswold of Connecticut took the floor. So long as his party had been in office, the vigor of the Constitution had found no warmer friend than he; but believing New England to have fallen at the mercy of Virginia, he was earnest to save her from the complete extinction which he thought near at hand. Griswold could not deny that the Constitution gave the power to acquire territory: his Federalist principles were too fresh to dispute such an inherent right; and Gouverneur Morris, as extreme a Federalist as himself, whose words had been used in the Constitution, averred that he knew in 1788 as well as he knew in 1803, that all North America must at length be annexed, and that it would have been Utopian to restrain the movement.[79] This was old Federalist doctrine, resting on “inherent rights,” on nationality and broad construction,--the Federalism of President Washington, which the Republican party from the beginning denounced as monarchical. Griswold would not turn his back on it; he still took a liberal view of the power, and even stretched it beyond reasonable shape to accord with Morris’s idea. “A new territory and new subjects,” said he, “may undoubtedly be obtained by conquest and by purchase; but neither the conquest nor the purchase can incorporate them into the Union. They must remain in the condition of colonies, and be governed accordingly.” This claim gave the central government despotic power over its new purchase; but it declared that a treaty which pledged the nation to admit the people of Louisiana into the Union must be invalid, because it assumed that “the President and Senate may admit at will any foreign nation into this copartnership without the consent of the States,”--a power directly repugnant to the principles of the compact. In substance, Griswold maintained that either under the war power or under the treaty-making power the government could acquire territory, and as a matter of course could hold and govern that territory as it pleased,--despotically if necessary, or for selfish objects; but that the President and Senate could not admit a foreign people into the Union, as a State. Yet to this, the treaty bound them. To meet this attack the Republicans put forward their two best men,--Joseph H. Nicholson of Maryland, and Cæsar A. Rodney of Delaware. The task was difficult, and Nicholson showed his embarrassment at the outset. “Whether the United States,” said he, “as a sovereign and independent empire, has a right to acquire territory is one thing; but whether they can admit that territory into the Union upon an equal footing with the other States is a question of a very different nature.” He refused to discuss this latter issue; in his opinion it was not before the House.