This is the old-fashioned political and rhetorical way of saying what the modern publicist would state in such language as this: In a federal system of government, all powers are distributed by the state, the nation, the ultimate sovereignty, through the Constitution, between the central Government and the Commonwealths. The assumption by the central Government of the authority to redistribute these powers in a different manner, in any {87} given case, is an assumption of sovereignty, the Constitution-making power, and the possession of any such power by the central Government makes a federal system of government impossible. It makes the Commonwealths only creatures and agencies of the central Government. It changes the whole system from federal government to centralized government. In the federal system of government as it existed, in 1820, in the United States, the determination of the question whether slavery should exist or not in any Commonwealth was reserved through the Constitution to each Commonwealth for itself, since this power was neither vested in the central Government nor denied to the Commonwealths. If Congress could assume this power, it could assume any and every other power and right which the Commonwealths possessed. Such authority in the central Government would destroy in principle the federal system, at once, and make the government a centralized form. [Sidenote: Pinkney's argument successful.] There was nobody in the Senate who did, or could, answer this argument. The amendments proposed after this to the bill as reported from the Judiciary committee contained no further restrictions upon the Commonwealth powers of Missouri, but had reference only to what remained of the Louisiana territory north and west of the boundaries of the proposed Commonwealth. [Sidenote: The adoption of Mr. Thomas' amendment by the Senate, and the passage of the Maine-Missouri bill thus amended.] The formal vote connecting the two subjects of Maine and Missouri was taken in the Senate on February 16th, and after this was resolved upon, Mr. Thomas immediately renewed his motion to amend the bill by the addition of a clause prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, outside of the boundaries of the proposed Commonwealth of Missouri. After an attempt, on the {88} one side, to carry this line up to the fortieth parallel, and a counter attempt on the other to make the prohibition extend to all the territory west of the Mississippi, except that already under Commonwealth government, or in process of being put under Commonwealth government by the existing bill--the result of which would have been the prohibition of slavery in the just organized Territory of Arkansas--Mr. Thomas' amendment was adopted as the fair compromise. The bill, as thus amended, passed the Senate on February 18th, 1820, and was sent immediately to the House of Representatives.