University of Virginia Library

TO ROBERT S. GARNETT.

Dear Sir. The mail brought me the evening before
the last, your favor of the 5th, with the copy
of the "New Views, &c," for which I tender my
acknowledgments.[60] I must put off the reading
of such a work till it may be subject to less interruption
than would at this time be unavoidable.

From a glance at a few passages in the outset, I
do not doubt that more competent lights as to the
proceedings of the Convention would have saved
the distinguished author from much error into
which he may have been led by the faint or refracted
rays to which he trusted. The general

terms or phrases used in the introductory propositions,
and now a source of so much constructive
ingenuity, were never meant to be inserted in their
loose form in the text of the Constitution. Like
resolutions preliminary to legal enactments it was
understood by all, that they were to be reduced by
proper limitations and specifications, into the form
in which they were to be final and operative; as was
actually done in the progress of the session.

Whether the Constitution in any of its stages or
as it now stands, be a National or a federal one,
is a question, which ought to be premised by a
definition of the terms, and then the answer must
be, that it is neither the one nor the other, but
possessing attributes of both. It is a system of
Government emphatically sui generis for designating
which there consequently was no appropriate term
or denomination pre-existing.

If there be any thing in these hasty remarks which
is rendered inapplicable by parts of the volume
into which I have not yet looked, you will be as
ready to excuse as sure to detect the misconception.