Memoir Correspondence and Miscellanies Author:Thomas Jefferson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: United States.. But when I consider that the limits of the United States aje 'precisely fixed by the treaty of 1783, that the constitution expressly declares its... more »elf to be made for the United States, I cannot help believing the intention was not to permit Congress to adrrfit into the Union new States, which should be formed out of the territory for which, and under whose authority alone, they were then acting. I do not believe it was meant that they might re- cefve England, Ireland, Holland, andc. into it, which would be the case on your construction. When an instrument admits two constructions-, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise.' 1 had rather a.sk an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider 'the grant of the treaty making power as boundless. Ifjt is, then we have no constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gtves. It specifies and delineates the operations permitted to the federal government, and gives all the powers necessary to carry these into execution. Whatever of these enumerated objects is proper for a law, Congress may make thn law; whatever is proper to be executed by way of a treaty, the President and Senate may enter into the treaty; whatever is to be done by a judicial sentence, the judges may pass the sentence. Nothing is more likely than that their enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all Jntman works. Let us go on then pe...« less