constitutions to
exist there. What, he asked, is to be done with this uncultivated
territory? Is it to remain a waste? Is the rice trade to be banished
from our coasts? Are Congress willing to deprive themselves of the
revenue arising from that trade, and which is daily increasing, and to
throw this great advantage into the hands of other countries?

Let us examine the use or the benefit of the resolutions contained in
the report. I call upon gentlemen to give me one single instance in
which they can be of service. They are of no use to Congress. The
powers of that body are already defined, and those powers cannot be
amended, confirmed or diminished by ten thousand resolutions. Is not
the first proposition of the report fully contained in the
Constitution? Is not that the guide and rule of this legislature. A
multiplicity of laws is reprobated in any society, and tend but to
confound and perplex. How strange would a law appear which was to
confirm a law; and how much more strange must it appear for this body
to pass resolutions to confirm the Constitution under which they sit!
This is the case with others of the resolutions.

A gentleman from Maryland (Mr. STONE,) very properly observed, that
the Union had received the different States with all their ill habits
about them. This was one of these habits established long before the
Constitution, and could not now be remedied. He begged Congress to
reflect on the number on the continent who were opposed to this
Constitution, and on the number which yet remained in the Southern
States. The violation of this compact they would seize on with
avidity; they would make a handle of it to cover their designs against
the government, and many good federalists, who would be injured by the
measure, would be induced to join them: his heart was truly federal,
and it always had been so, and he wished those designs frustrated. He
begged Congress to beware before they went too far: he called on them
to attend to the interests of two whole States, as well as to the
memorials of a society of Quakers, who came forward to blow the
trumpet of sedition, and to destroy that Constitution which they had
not in the least contributed by personal service or supply to
establish.

He seconded Mr. TUCKER'S motion.

Mr. SMITH (of S.C.) said, the gentlemen from Massachusetts, (Mr.
GERRY,) had declared that it was the opinion of the select committee,
of which he was a member, that the memorial of the Pe