lexander McLeod. What then? Has not the President
a right to send the Attorney-General to New York on that or any
other subject? Where is the constitutional provision prohibiting him
from sending the Attorney-General to New York on that or any other
of the subjects which are before the judicial courts of that state?
Yes, the Attorney-General has been sent there, and we have his
instructions. And I have heard here, on the part of some of my forty
friends from New York, a great deal about the conscious dignity and
honor of this _Empire State_ of New York. I am not very fond of
that term 'empire state,' in the language of this Union; and I say
that if there is an 'empire state' in the Union, it is Delaware. To
be magniloquent, and talk about the empire state, may well become
the forty gentlemen who represent the state on this floor, having
reference to their own numbers, and the numbers of their
constituents, or to the extent, fertility, and beauty, of her soil;
yet this is a distinction not recognized in the constitution of the
United States. They are all, as members of this Union, equal, and
the State of Delaware has as good a right to be called the 'empire
state' as New York. Now, if my forty friends from New York choose to
call it the 'empire state,' I will not quarrel with them. It is only
as to consequences that I enter my caveat against the too frequent
use of those terms on this floor; for there is meaning in those
words, 'empire state,' when used among co-estates, more than meets
the ear.

"Suppose that it was in Delaware that such an event had occurred; do
you suppose my friend here (Mr. Rodney) from Delaware would have
offered such a resolution as this? And, by the terms of the
resolution, I should presume my friends from New York think there is
a little more dignity and power in forty representatives than only
one."

In September, 1841, a plan for a newly-invented Commonplace Book, as an
improvement upon Locke's, was brought to Mr. Adams for his
recommendatory notice; which he declined, from a general rule he had
adopted on the subject, but said he thought it might be very useful, if
a practical system of such a manual could be simplified to the intellect
and industry of common minds, which he doubted. "I had occupied and
amused a long life," said he, "in the search of such a compendious
wisdom-