ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and folly, “Liberty first and Union afterwards”; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,—­Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!

     Mr. Hayne having rejoined to Mr. Webster, especially on the
     constitutional question, Mr. Webster rose, and, in conclusion,
said:—­#/

A few words, Mr. President, on this constitutional argument, which the honorable gentleman has labored to reconstruct.

His argument consists of two propositions and an inference.  His propositions are,—­

1.  That the Constitution is a compact between the States.

2.  That a compact between two, with authority reserved to one to interpret its terms, would be a surrender to that one of all power whatever.

3.  Therefore, (such is his inference,) the general government does not possess the authority to construe its own powers.

Now, Sir, who does not see, without the aid of exposition or detection, the utter confusion of ideas involved in this so elaborate and systematic argument.

The Constitution, it is said, is a compact between States; the States, then, and the States only, are parties to the compact.  How comes the general government itself a party?  Upon the honorable gentleman’s hypothesis, the general government is the result of the compact, the creature of the compact, not one of the parties to it.  Yet the argument, as the gentleman has now stated it, makes the government itself one of its own creators.  It makes it a party to that compact to which it owes its own existence.

For the purpose of erecting the Constitution on the basis of a compact, the gentleman considers the States as parties to that compact; but as soon as his compact is made, then he chooses to consider the general government, which is the offspring of that compact, not its offspring, but one of its parties; and so, being a party, without the power of judging on the terms of compact.  Pray, Sir, in what school is such reasoning as this taught?

If the whole of the gentleman’s main proposition were conceded to him,—­that is to say, if I admit, for the sake of the argument, that the Constitution is a compact between States,—­the inferences which he draws from that proposition are warranted by no just reasoning.  If the Constitution be a compact between States, still that Constitution, or that compact, has established a government, with