that under this article there might be introduced, on our soil, a single Government over a vast extent of country--a Government foreign to the persons over whom it might be exercised, and capable of binding those not represented, by statutes, in all cases whatever. I find nothing to authorize these enormous pretensions, nothing in the expositions of the friends of the Constitution, nothing in the expressions of alarm by its opponents--expressions which have since been developed as prophecies. Every portion of the United States was then provided with a municipal Government, which this Constitution was not designed to supersede, but merely to modify as to its conditions. The compacts of cession by North Carolina and Georgia are subsequent to the Constitution. They adopt the ordinance of 1787, except the clause respecting slavery. But the precautionary repudiation of that article forms an argument quite as satisfactory to the advocates for Federal power, as its introduction would have done. The refusal of a power to Congress to legislate in one place, seems to justify the seizure of the same power when another place for its exercise is found. This proceeds from a radical error, which lies at the foundation of much of this discussion. It is, that the Federal Government may lawfully do whatever is not directly prohibited by the Constitution. This would have been a fundamental error, if no amendments to the Constitution had been made. But the final expression of the will of the people of the States, in the 10th amendment, is, that the powers of the Federal Government are limited to the grants of the Constitution. Before the cession of Georgia was made, Congress asserted rights, in respect to a part of her territory, which require a passing notice. In 1798 and 1800, acts for the settlement of limits with Georgia, and to establish a Government in the Mississippi Territory, were adopted. A Territorial Government was organized, between the Chattahoochee and Mississippi rivers. This was within the limits of Georgia. These acts dismembered Georgia. They established a separate Government upon her soil, while they rather derisively professed, "that the establishment of that Government shall in no respects impair the rights of the State of Georgia, either to the jurisdiction or soil of the Territory." The Constitution provided that the importation of such persons as any of the existing States shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by Congress before 1808. By these enactments, a prohibition was placed upon the importation of slaves into Georgia, although her Legislature had made none.