The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1850-09-20

z thority; for Congress can delegate powers to 9th
ers, which it exercise iiselfust AS 1t pass
es laws which II cannot execute Itself congress
: may accept or reject CONSTITUTIONS when prof
fered with a view TO the admission of Siate,-
but cannot change il, and still less it subst
ttIte another TO suit itself. Under the Constitu-
ton, Congress may admit new States" into the
Unions but then they must be real States, BRING
ing with them raid constitutions formed under a
due authorization from competentauihorlty. Now
II my reasonngs be sound, the Constitution OF
California was as imbecile for service, bit of
unsoled parchment, up to the very moment OF
admitting her into the Union: and If 1t became
I valid then, Congress must have made 1t so,--and
has thus, under AN authority to do 40 more
4 than admit a State through single organic
/ fiat of sovereign omni Impotence, CREATED A STATE:
MADE A CONSTITUTIONS FOR HER: APPOINTED
HER SENATORS AND REPREsEETATIyEs: AND RE-
cEyED HER INTO THE UNION. IL is thus, If at
I a,-that California became State and is now IN
the Union! It's nothing but this pestilent anti
slavery fanaticism, which shuts out truth, expe-
| rlence and conscience from mem reasOnngs, and
| conducts them To results, which when scrutiny
exposes, thsir judgments must revolt at Bring
the very men who have supported this monstrous
measure to the tests of analoges, and they Will
4 admit IN every instance you may put TO them,
that Congress is utterly incompetent to give va
/ lidy and force to an act which was once, and in
its reception absolutely void for the want of con-
stitutional authority to pass IT, II on the decease
Ilof a United States Marshall, Judge of the
United States District Court, should undertake TO
appoint and commission another there Is not
one of these members Of Congress who would not
admit that such appointment and all acts done
under it, would be absolute and incurable multi
ties, and that Congress, thong h originally compe-
tent to have invested such power in the Judges,
would be utterly powerless to retroact upon the
Marshall acts, to give the least validity or
force to any of them. If during the illness Of a
United States District Judge, the President of the
United States were TO appoint and commission a
Judge in his place to perform his judicial duties,
(even though the sick Judge should die within an
hour after such appointment was made, and be-
fore any judicial act had been performed, } every
body knows, that every such judicial act per-
formed by the Judge thereafter, would be
entirely null and void from the radical vice of
consiituiionaiy inherent the original appoint
men':-The commissioning the Judge anew,
could have had no retroactive effect whatever,
and all the powers of the Executive and Congress
would have been inadequate to validate them. In
tie cases have put, no one will question the le-
gitimacy of the consequences have deduced from
the hypothesis, to witt that acts originally void
and detunct for want of constitutional sanction,--
by no gavanIc process of Congress, can be
heaved back into life, and thus acquire validity
they had never possessed; and every sound
minded man, who will put aside his pre-judgments
and gave fair scope to his conscience, will gener
alize these conclusions, and apply them to all acts
whatsoever, void and defunct ABB INITIo for the
want of constitutional authority. In the cases
put of the void acts of the Marshall and the
Judge it is to be noted that though nsusceptibe'of
revival, the ends they aimed would still have been
attainable by investing those officers others with
powers to perform them all over again; and so
| of California BY demanding her back to Il new
convention called under the sanction of Congress,
she might, if she would, (and if Congress had
prescribed reduction OF lmts) have readopted en-
harm N all tic
and validity would have been exclusively derived
| from the second Convention, which could have
had no retro active revlving force whatever
upon the first Convention, any Of its proceed
ings lfhigher and weightier authority, or more
cogent reasoning is needed to establish that the
people of California could not constitutionaiiy
wrest from Congress, its jurisdiction and sover-
| eighty over the Federal domain, and constitute
sovereign State and Government yer without the
primary sanction Of those whom the whole right
OF domain and dominion belonged, and that Con-
gress could not create State, receive into the
Union, any community OF men which was
State, in the sense of the Constitution, let me
refer you to the unanswered and unanswerable
demonstrations recently made by Senators Ber-
ren and Butler in the Senate Of the United States.
| think may now assume il as proven, that as
the people of California did not derive the authori
ty to constitute a Government over the property
and territory of the co-States, from Congress, in
whom the whole jurisdiction and sovereignty ade-
quate to such function of sovereignty exclu-
svely vested by the Constitution; and as they
did not acquire it through expulsion of the
Federal Authorities, from both the dominion and
the domain, through revolution and conquest they
were wholly without authority in the premises,
and of course VOID of all constitutional capacity
have organized a State Government over the pro-
perty OF others and without their consent, and
hence, that the California Constitution and all pro-
ceedmgs under 1t, are and were alb iritio, ABso-
II m al 40
sumo it proven that it was past all the pow
ers of Congress to resuscitate an embryo thus
aborted from the womb Of Legislation and dead
born, by breathing into it anew the breath Of &ife
This being so, all the skill of craftsmanship and
all the perversons Of sophisry alike deied,
to elude the corrollary, that CALIFORNIA is NEl-
TIER CoNsmTUTIoNAL STATE, NOR CoNsTiru-
TIoNALLY IN THE UNION.
To all this it may be answered by,
President FHlmore-Admitting all you say to be
constitutional doctrne,--sul California has been
already received mo the Union: The thing has
been done: How can 1T be undone;
Randolph Of Roanoke.-Tbat which is not Con-
stitutionay done, is not done at all-Congress it
self can undo what it had no right to attempt, nor
power to accomplish.
President F.-But the admission of Stote I'M
ports contract with the co-States and rights are
already vested under it,--and Congress is without
jurisdiction To annu a contract itself has made,
Y.
X. ofR.-lf Congress may not undo, that which
oeng void in itself, may need no undong, beyond
a declaration of its nulty;--then, the matter
sounding in contract and the United States being
party to the controversy, the is brought within
the jurisdiction and cognizance of the Federal
Courts, and may be adjudcated thither.
President F.-True, were it not that the ques-
don of the Constitutional admission OF State, is
exclusively political one, and the Supreme Court
of the United States is without jurisdiction in all
questions of that nature.
r. QfR.-That objection would be valid if the
question was exclusively political, but that is not
the case here,--as may readily illustrated. Sup
pose California should claim the public domain by
virtue of the escheat, and that the United States
should contest her right to it:--That would be
controversy, which no authority but the Federal
Judicial power would be competent to decide;-
and as the escheat of the domain, would be the
only issue in the cause.-the vital point to be de-
termined would necessarily be,--whether Caifor-
MIA was constitulionally in the Union or not for
if she was not, there could have been no escheat
nor resulting dIvesturei | will not assert that the
Court will take jurisdiction of the question, but
| If 1t should, have strong opinion and trust,
that ii will pronounce that act of admission an in
! durable nuty and absolutely void