[Mr. Jefferson takes this very ground, in almost the same words, in
his letter, 1803, to Wilson C. Nichols in the Louisiana Colony
purchase case, when, after proving by his own strict construction
of the Constitution that there was no power in that instrument to
make such purchase, and confessing the importance in that very case
of setting "an example against broad construction," he concludes:
"If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I
shall acquiesce with satisfaction; confiding that the good sense of
the country will correct the evil of construction when it shall
produce ill ejects."]
Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that the seeds thus sown by
the hands of Jefferson on the "sacred soil" of Virginia and Kentucky,
were dragon's teeth, destined in after years to spring up as legions of
armed men battling for the subversion of that Constitution and the
destruction of that Union which he so reverenced, and which he was so
largely instrumental in founding--and which even came back in his own
life to plague him and Madison during his embargo, and Madison's war of
1812-15, in the utterances and attitude of some of the New England
Federalists.
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