Mr. JOHN Adams, in his speech at the opening of Congress, said: “ I congratulatethe peopleof the U.S.on the assemblingof Congressat the permanentseatof their Government: and Icongratulate you, gentlemen, on the prospect of a residence not tobechanzed.” It was to be a permanent seat of Government and a residence not to be changed. That was the idea that the POTUS had after all the conflict of that day in fixing this site fer the capital. He congratutates congress upon the fact that at last they had found a home; they had found a place where they could be, as it were, under their own vine and fig tree, undisturbed by local legislatures or anything else. " It is with you, gentlemen, to consider whether the local powersover the DistCol.vestedby the Constitution in the Congress of the U.S shalllbeimmediately exercised. If, in your opinion. this important trust ought now to be executed, you cannot fail. while performing it. to take into view the future probablesituation of the territor for the happinessof which you are about to provi e. You will consider it as the capital of a great nation. advmaenrccien, ginwith unexampled rapidity in arts, in comwealth and in population: and possessing wawitahyin itself those resourceswhich. if not thrown or lamentably misdirected.will secure to it a long courseof prosperity and self government.” The HoRep, in answer to that congratulation, responded in like terms. I need not read them. I need not read the proclamation of Washington establishing the seat of Government here. I know, sir, that we have done a great wron. we have muti lated this capital that was the hope and desire of our fathers; we have suffered the enemy to approach to itsvery doors and threaten us any day by a fortification on Arlington heights that will overshadow your capital and threaten us perpetually, and will falsify the hopes of the Fathers that we had established ourselves where no local interference could disturb us. Sir, ‘was that act of retrocession constitutional? I need not argue that question. Was there a statesman at the time the act was passed who came forward and said that what he was doing was constitutional? How have courts and lawyers and everybody else treated it since; and why? I need not argue it. You will see, if you go minutely into it, that the cession of this District was made originally by 2 States as a contemporaneous act, concurrin in the same thing; for the act of cession of Maryland and the act of cession of Virginia were in the same language and at the same time, and made for the identical purpose of compling with the constitutional provision that enab ed Congress to accept from the States a certain territory, not exceeding ten miles square, to be the capital of the nation, and to have jurisdiction over it in all cases whatsoever. In words the most ample that the English language could supply the Constitution conferred upon Congress juris diction forever “in all cases whatsoever, ” dissevering this District from the States to which it formerly belonged as perfectly as it could be done by human language; and when you make a retrocession of it you can make it just as well to the State of Ohio or RhdIsland as to Maryland or Virginia. All claim to it on the part of the States was gone. No lurking interest remained that would suffer them to come in and claim anything from it, but it was under the entire control and jurisdiction of the general Government in all cases whatsoever, and it was forever to remain there. Now, sir, if these 2 Statesconcurred in this grant, in one grand act, could one of the m, without the consent of the other, receive back the grant? Could anything less than they who were authorized to make the original cession rescind and annul that cession? Is it not a general principle of law, that it takes the same power to undo and annul a contract or a cession that it does to make it? Can one do it without the consent of the other? Was Maryland consulted on the subject Of ‘this retroces si0n to Virginia? Would not Maryland, had she been consulted, have said, “ We made our cession upon the faith that Virginia had made hers, and both together granted such a site as we deemed proper for the capital of the nation ‘2” Could one dissever it without the other? I say to you, no, sir; you could not do it without reversing every principle of law with which I am conversant. There is the reason going to the very root of the matter and showing that you only half did the work when you undertook to steal from the capital half of its territory. Virginia, rebellious, always ready and prompt to agree to undo all that the fathers had done, was willing at once to take back the cession.