Calhoun and his friends, no less anxious than Cass and his friends to rescue Slavery from the discretion of Congress, though for other reasons, contrived to find a more respectable excuse for such a policy. As California and New Mexico--both free soil--had lately been acquired, they contended that the moment new territories attached to the United States, the same moment the Constitution attached to them; and inasmuch as the Constitution guarantied the existence of Slavery, _presto_, Slavery must be regarded as existing under it in the Territories! This, we say, was more respectable ground than Squatter Sovereignty, because it met the question more fairly in the face; yet, considered either as dialectics or history, it was not one whit less absurd. We do not wonder that Webster, and all the other sound lawyers of the nation, heard such an announcement of Constitutional hermeneutics with utter surprise and astonishment. It was enough to astound even the veriest tyro in the law. The Constitution--and especially by all the premises of the State-Rights school--is a mere compact between the States; it confers no powers but delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,--they are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their own energy they may leap into or embrace the Territories is to argue that a corpse may on its own motion rise and walk.