and thoroughfare of a surprisingly active internal commerce. 'On its shores, on the identical ground that is now in dispute, must be annually laid down the accumulated surplus product of the active industry of millions of people as the point from which to take its departure for the markets of the world. But this is not all; the great and important business of transhipment, with the ten thousand contracts incident to it, must forever be done on this very disputed shore. Upon it also must be landed, for distribution in the interior, all those return supplies of merchandise and commodities which minister to the wants and comforts of this great population. Look, for example, at the city of Cincinnati, and picture in the imagination what may be seen there any day in the year — her lovely port crowded with steamers, and almost innumberable other water crafts, with their rich and varied cargoes - her wharves, crowded with busy, bustling people, and with every variety of merchandise, where contracts are making, and property changing hands almost every minute of the day-all on this disputed ground; and is it not a matter of vital moment that it should be known with certainty by what law these people are to be governed, and their contracts regulated, while there in the transaction of their daily business? Can any one fail to perceive the absolute necessity of a strong and effective local police, and a code of police laws, to control and keep in subjection the loose and disorderly masses of men thus congregated together from the most distant parts of the country? Can it promote the convenience of the people of Ohio, or of those who come, there to do business, that the wharves and shores of the river, and the water-craft lying there, shall be governed by such police laws as Kentucky might choose to make? That the contracts made at the Ohio shore, and on the boats attached to it, shall be governed by the laws of Kentucky or Virginia, and of which they know nothing, and were not even thought of when they entered into them? That the citizens of Ohio, while thus engaged, should be there arrested and carried into imprisonment by the officers of the opposite States, their contracts subjected to, and their persons punished by laws made by men in whose election they have had no voice, and over whom they can exercise no control or influence? Or

would not these things, in any community whatever, be justly regarded as an intolerable grievance? Go into the city of Cincinnati or into any town on the Ohio, and ask its business inhabitants what part of all their public streets, or places of resort, they could least afford to give up to the control of the State on the opposite bank, and they would tell, with one united voice, that the wharf on the river, and shore on the river, were the last that they could surrender. And of what use, let me inquire, would this power be to you, if you had it, but to keep up and nourish an everlasting enmity between you and us, and administer food to a never-dying feud? Does it comport with that regard for the convenience of the future population," which the venerable Chief Justice says Virginia must have had in view in providing for the erection of new States on the Ohio? Is it consistent with this statesmanlike and benevolent intention of Virginia that if the people of the new States have occasion to erect a wharf at the water edge, to carry a railway to the river, to lay down a suction pump to draw up supplies of water for their steam machinery, or for the daily wants of the inhabitants of their towns-in a word, to approach the water and use it for a thousand new and nameless purposes, which the fast multiplying pursuits and wants of society, in the progress of that civilization they fondly hope to attain, will render indispensable to their comfort and prosperity, that you should have the power, at your will, to stop them all? Like all unfit and misplaced power, it would be a curse, both to you and to us, if you had it. It is true, that if you could make a final decision of this question in your favor, and should do it, you would for the moment quicken into life a wild spirit of speculation. For who can doubt but that so soon, and as fast as steam would carry them to its shores, multitudes of adventurers would rush there to lay down your land warrants upon the river shore between high and low water mark on the whole line of the border States! I solemnly declare, as a citizen of Ohio, that if you were to offer us this power over the Virginia shore, I would not take it as a gift. I would not accept power that would bring with it perpetual annoyance, collision, and never-ending controversies between those

who arc neighbors, and whose interests it is, and ever must be, to be friends.

Before passing from this topic to the next head that I propose to discuss, permit me to inquire whether, in case you hold that Virginia has a right to make arrests on the Ohio shore, that her laws, both civil and criminal, extend there, you will not thereby involve your own people, on your own side of the river, in a like responsibility to the laws and jurisdiction of the State of Ohio? In a word, whether a regard to your own policy and convenience would not admonish you to abstain from such a decision? I shall endeavor to show that, place the actual boundary where you may-at the top of the bank, at the medium stage of the water, at low water mark, or in the middle of the channel -and Ohio has a right to do on the Virginia shore whatever Virginia has a right to do on the Ohio side. When Virginia passed her act of Assembly in December, 1789, to enable the people of Kentucky to form a constitution and become a State, she proposed to Kentucky certain conditions for her assent, which were to be binding on both parties. One of these conditions related to the Ohio River, and proposed that its use and navigation along its course in passing Virginia and Kentucky should be free and common to the citizens of the United States, and that the respective jurisdictions of those States should be concurrent with the States possessing the opposite shores of the river. This condition was assented to by the convention that formed the constitution of Kentucky, and the admission of Kentucky into the Union was an act of assent thereto by Congress. And thus validity and effect, according to the form prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, was given to this compact between the two States, and is binding and obligatory on both. That condition or compact is in these words, viz.: "The use and navigation of the River Ohio, so far as the territory of the proposed State (Kentucky), or the territory which shall remain within the limits of this Commonwealth (Virginia) lies thereon, shall be free and common to the citizens of the United States, and the respective jurisdictions of this Commonwealth and of the proposed State on the river as aforesaid, shall be concurrent only with the States that may possess the opposite shores of the said