"
Mr. Madison, who was one of the leading members of the Convention,
advocating afterward, in the "Federalist," the adoption of the new
Constitution, asks the question, "On what principle the Confederation,
which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be
superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it?" He
answers this question "by recurring to the absolute necessity of the
case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent
law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and
happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions
aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." He
proceeds, however, to give other grounds of justification:
"It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that
all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a
breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and
that a breach committed by either of the parties absolves the
others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the
compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to
appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for
dispensing with the consent of particular States to a
dissolution of the Federal pact, will not the complaining
parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and
important infractions with which they may be confronted? _The
time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas
which this paragraph exhibits.
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