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all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. It cannot accede to the mad project of disunion of which you would be the first victims-its first magistrate cannot, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty-the consequence must be fearful for you, distressing to your fellow-citizens here, and to the friends of good government throughout the world. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal: it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. It is yet in your power to disappoint them. There is yet time to show that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your revolutionary history, will not abandon that Union to support which so many of them fought, and bled, and died. I adjure you, as you honour their memory-as you love the cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives-as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your state the disorganizing edict of its convention; bid its members to reassemble and promulgate the decided expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honour; tell them that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all; declare that you will never take the field unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you; that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonoured and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the Constitution of your country! Its destroyers you cannot be. You may disturb its peace-you may interrupt the course of its prosperity--you may cloud its reputation for stability-but its tranquillity will be restored, its prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character will be transferred, and remain an eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the disorder.

Fellow-citizens of the United States! The threat of unhallowed disunion--the names of those, once respected, by whom it is uttered--the array of military force to support it-denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. The conjunction demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my intentions, but of my prin

ciples of action; and as the claim was asserted of a right by a state to annul the laws of the Union, and even to secede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in relation to the origin and form of our government, and the construction I give to the instrument by which it was created, seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties which has been expressed, I rely with equal confidence on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws-to preserve the Union by all constitutional means to arrest, if possible, by moderate but firm measures, the necessity of a recourse to force; and, if it be the will of Heaven that the recurrence of its primeval curse on mån for the shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States.

Fellow-citizens ! The momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether your sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessings it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed will be such as to inspire new confidence in Republican institutions, and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage which it will bring to their defence, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children.

May the great Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with which He has favoured ours may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis to see the folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.

In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, having signed the same with my hand.

Done at the city of Washington this 10th day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the fifty-seventh.

By the President :

ANDREW JACKSON.

EDW. LIVINGSTON, Secretary of State.

F, p. 360.

OPINION AS TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL VALIDITY OF THE LAWS OF NEW-YORK GRANTING EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

ON considering the case submitted to me on behalf of Mr. Gibbons, I am of opinion that he has a perfect right, founded on the documents, of which copies are appended to the case, to navigate his steamboats on all the waters of this state, which it enjoys in common with New-Jersey, and which communicate either with a port or place in the State of New-York, or empty into the Atlantic Ocean; and that such right is not taken away, affected, or impaired by the legislative grant to Messrs. Livingston and Fulton. I should, therefore, advise Mr. Gibbons, instead of making the application he contemplates to the Legislature, to bring the questions at issue between him and its grantees, to trial in the courts of the United States. The reasons that govern my opinion I shall briefly state.

The case of Livingston and Fulton vs. Van Ingen and others (9 Johns. Rep., 507) furnishes, as I humbly conceive, no inferences hostile to the claim of Mr. Gibbons; but, properly considered, strengthens the arguments which occur to me in support of this right. The great question in that cause was twofold, viz. Whether the grant to Livingston and Fulton was absolutely void, as made in contravention of the constitutional powers of Congress, first, "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts;" and, secondly, whether it were repugnant to the power vested in Congress "to regulate commerce."

I. On the first point, the court decided that the grant was not absolutely void, on two grounds: first, that, considering Messrs. Livingston and Fulton as inventors, the state had a concurrent right with Congress to reward them as inventors, by the grant of exclusive privileges; secondly, that, considering them not as inventors, but as possessors and importers of a foreign invention, the state had an independent power to reward them as such; which power had not been ceded to Congress at all.

It must be borne in mind, that Van Ingen and his associates showed no right or title whatever; and, for aught that appears, their mode of applying the steam-engine in the navigation of their boats was the same that had alread

been introduced by Livingston and Fulton. Throughout the whole discussion, the powers of the state were assimilated to the powers of Congress; and two of the learned judges, by whom opinions were delivered, Mr. Justice Thompson and Mr. Justice Yates, explicitly admit that the state powers can only be legitimately exercised in harmony with, and in subordination to, the superior power of Congress. In strict reasoning, therefore, no more can be inferred from the decision of the Court of Errors than that the grant to Livingston and Fulton is so far valid as to secure to them, and their representatives, an exclusive right to that peculiar mode of navigating vessels by steam or fire which they introduced into practice, and of which the act of March, 1798, states Mr. Livingston to be in possession. Such is the extent of the constitutional power of Congress, to which the state powers are resembled; and it is only by this limited construction of the grant that the reasoning of the learned judges can be rendered applicable and consistent. As it is, then, only that a "collision" between this exercise of the state sovereignty and the constitutional power of Congress can possibly be prevented, certainly the Court of Errors has not said, nor is there any ground for supposing that it meant to say, that the state, by virtue, either of its concurrent power to reward inventors, or its independent power to reward the importers of foreign inventions, can prohibit the introduction and use, within its jurisdiction, of all future inventions, although secured by patent, in relation to the same object; or, by a still more violent stretch of authority, transfer the exclusive right to such inventions from the patentee to the legislative favourite. Yet, if the terms of the original grant to Messrs. Livingston and Fulton, and of the various laws passed to enlarge and secure that grant, are to be taken in their literal extent, such was to be their operation.

By the act of March, 1798, all the privileges granted before to John Fitch and his representatives were transferred to Mr. Livingston. These privileges were "the sole and exclusive right of constructing, making, using, employing, or navigating all, and every species or kind of boats or water-craft, which might be urged or propelled through the waters of this state, by force of fire or steam, in all creeks, rivers, &c., within the territory and jurisdiction of this state." It must be remembered, that the grant to Fitch was made previously to the adoption of the present Federal Constitution, and be fore the state had surrendered this portion of its sovereign

ty to the General Government; while it remained in full and acknowledged possession of the powers to reward genius and skill, and to encourage and foster navigation and commerce, by the means resorted to in favour of John Fitch. But she had ceded those powers, which, to be effectual, must be exclusive, to the United States, before the monopoly-for this is the proper, though odious term, by which such grants should be designated-was attempted to be vested in Messrs. Livingston and Fulton. The only limitation of this monopoly of navigation is, that steam or fire be made use of as the propelling force; and the general terms of the grant comprehend every possible mode of producing and applying that force, which human ingenuity has discovered or can invent.

By the act of 1808, creating the forfeiture, it is declared that "no person or persons, without the license of the persons entitled to the exclusive right, shall navigate on the waters of this state, or within the jurisdiction thereof, any boat or vessel moved by steam or fire." Thus the introduction into this state of any future invention, however original or valuable, in navigating vessels by steam or fire, is in terms prohibited without the sanction of the individuals in whom the right to employ all such inventions is exclusively vested. The very ground on which invention is to work is seized upon and preoccupied, and an exclusive privilege given, which not only prevents the future reward of security to inventors, but, in one important region, would stop the progress of discovery itself. The very elements by which improvements can be made is monopolized, and the occasion snatched from Congress of exercising the power given to it by the Constitution. Now, if this can be done in one state, in relation to any one subject, why may it not be done in all, and in relation to all? Where are we to fix the limit of state power? Why may not the states, respectively, grant monopolies embracing all the possible elements and materials, of which inventions can be framed, and every possible subject upon which ingenuity can operate? and thus anticipate and frustrate, in toto, the exercise of the constitutional power of Congress, to secure an exclusive right to inventors.

It may be said that this is an extreme and improbable supposition. I admit it to be improbable that the states will attempt such an exercise of power; but it is by extreine cases, or, to speak with more propriety, it is by pur

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