Then came Wilson Cary Nicholas. Five years before, in the Virginia legislature, Nicholas had spoken and voted for the Resolutions moved by his colleague, John Taylor of Caroline. He then said that if the principle were once established that Congress had a right to use powers not expressly delegated, “the tenure by which we hold our liberty would be entirely subverted: instead of rights independent of human control, we must be content to hold by the courtesy and forbearance of those whom we have heretofore considered as the servants of the people.” Instead of using the same language in 1803, he accepted his colleague’s views as to the extent of the treaty-making power, and added reasoning of his own. If the spirit of New England Calvinism contained an element of self-deceit, Virginia metaphysics occasionally ran into slippery evasion, as the argument of Nicholas showed. He evaded a straightforward opinion on every point at issue. The treaty-making power was undefined, he thought, but not unlimited; the general limitations of the Constitution applied to it, not the special limitations of power; and of course the treaty must be judged by its conformity with the general meaning of the compact. He then explained away the apparent difficulties in the case. “If the third article of the treaty,” said he, “is an engagement to incorporate the territory of Louisiana into the Union of the United States and to make it a State, it cannot be considered as an unconstitutional exercise of the treaty-making power, for it will not be asserted by any rational man that the territory is incorporated as a State by the treaty itself.” This incorporation was stipulated to be done “according to the principles of the Constitution,” and the States might do it or not, at their discretion: if it could not be done constitutionally, it might be done by amendment. Nothing could be more interesting than to see the discomfort with which the champions of State-rights tossed themselves from one horn to the other of the Federalist dilemma. The Federalists cared little on which horn their opponents might choose to impale themselves, for both were equally fatal. Either Louisiana must be admitted as a State, or must be held as territory. In the first case the old Union was at an end; in the second case the national government was an empire, with “inherent sovereignty” derived from the war and treaty-making powers,--in either case the Virginia theories were exploded. The Virginians felt the embarrassment, and some of them, like Nicholas, tried to hide it in a murmur of words and phrases; but the Republicans of Kentucky and Tennessee were impatient of such restraint, and slight as it was, thrust it away. The debate was closed by Senator Cocke of Tennessee, who defied opposition. “I assert,” said he, “that the treaty-making powers in this country are competent to the full and free exercise of their best judgment in making treaties without limitation of power.”