Among the many constitutional dilemmas into which the party had been brought by this compulsory action, was a provision of the treaty that the port of New Orleans should enjoy certain favours for a number of years. To reconcile this exception with the Constitution, which says that "all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the states," it was declared that the territory had been purchased by the States in their confederated capacity and they could hold it like a colony. Therefore, the Congress could regulate it as a territory under the Constitution without reference to the provisions affecting the States. Thus did fate compel a virtual acknowledgment from the sticklers for individual rights, within four years after their accession to national control, that the Constitution did not follow in all its provisions the extension of sovereignty over new soil. From a broad point of view, the placing of sixty years of territorial expansion in the hands of the party opposed to the practice by birth and nature is a strong evidence of the checks and balances which have made the nation. Under strict construction, territorial expansion became a potent factor in loosening the bonds in which the Government might have been confined. Under loose construction, expansion might have become a centrifugal force through foreign conquest and colonial holding which would have destroyed the free system it was intended to build up. The Jeffersonians were moved in later expansions by a desire to extend an economic system and to make party capital. They never sought national aggrandisement, as their opponents might have done had they been in power. Proud of the territorial growth of the Union as we now are, and seeing so clearly the wisdom of the final consummation, we forget that the domain might have been increased too rapidly or too extensively in more sympathetic hands. In still another way was the fallacy of strict construction laid bare by the Louisiana question. The remedy of an amendment to the Constitution to bestow needed powers had been the one frequently suggested. Here was an early opportunity to test this constitutional preventive against central usurpation. But time was wanting. "From the moment that France takes possession of the mouth of the Mississippi," said Jefferson, "she becomes our mortal enemy." Amendment-making is necessarily a slow process. Months if not years are required. Jefferson was obliged reluctantly to abandon his first thought of an amendment to cover both the present case of Louisiana and the future affair of the Floridas, if they were not included in Louisiana. He was forced to suggest to members of Congress that the less said about any constitutional difficulty the better, and that it would be desirable for that body to do what was necessary in silence.