tranquillity and safety within.  Are there any of their countrymen, who would subject them to greater sacrifices, to any other humiliations than those essentially necessary to the security of the object for which they were thus separated from their fellow-citizens?  Are their rights alone not to be guaranteed by the application of those great principles upon which all our constitutions are founded?  We are told by the greatest of British orators and statesmen that at the commencement of the War of the Revolution the most stupid men in England spoke of “their American subjects.”  Are there, indeed, citizens of any of our States who have dreamed of their subjects in the District of Columbia?  Such dreams can never be realized by any agency of mine.  The people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens.  Being in the latter condition when the Constitution was formed, no words used in that instrument could have been intended to deprive them of that character.  If there is anything in the great principle of unalienable rights so emphatically insisted upon in our Declaration of Independence, they could neither make nor the United States accept a surrender of their liberties and become the subjects—­in other words, the slaves—­of their former fellow-citizens.  If this be true—­and it will scarcely be denied by anyone who has a correct idea of his own rights as an American citizen—­the grant to Congress of exclusive jurisdiction in the District of Columbia can be interpreted, so far as respects the aggregate people of the United States, as meaning nothing more than to allow to Congress the controlling power necessary to afford a free and safe exercise of the functions assigned to the General Government by the Constitution.  In all other respects the legislation of Congress should be adapted to their peculiar position and wants and be conformable with their deliberate opinions of their own interests.

I have spoken of the necessity of keeping the respective departments of the Government, as well as all the other authorities of our country, within their appropriate orbits.  This is a matter of difficulty in some cases, as the powers which they respectively claim are often not defined by any distinct lines.  Mischievous, however, in their tendencies as collisions of this kind may be, those which arise between the respective communities which for certain purposes compose one nation are much more so, for no such nation can long exist without the careful culture of those feelings of confidence and affection which are the effective bonds to union between free and confederated states.  Strong as is the tie of interest, it has been often found ineffectual.  Men blinded by their passions have been known to adopt measures for their country in direct opposition to all the suggestions of policy.  The alternative, then, is to destroy or keep down a bad passion by creating and fostering a good one, and this seems to be the