teration at any time hereafter be made in any
of them, unless such alteration be agreed to
in a Congress of the United States, and be
afterwards confirmed by the Legislature of
every State."
They spoke of the Confederacy as a Union,
which it was not within the power of the
States to dissolve—" The Union shall be per-
petual." The title of the confederacy was,
as the title of our present National Government is,
"The United States." Each State
was to have one vote in Congress. Nothing
was effected in regard to certain powers that
did not receive the assent of the States par-
ticularly as such, and I suppose nobody will
maintain that the articles of confederation es-
tablished any sovereign government,, any par-
amount government. That was the confed-
eration.
Now, sir, what effect was wrought by the
adoption of the Constitution of the United
States? The Constitution of the United
States was adopted, not tor the sake ait all of
forming a nation; not for the sake even of
forming the prevent system. Because it is
notorious that the delegates who were ap-
pointed, were appointed merely to alter the
mode of exercising the powers of the confed-
eration, so as to contribute to the practical
and material advantage of the people of the
States as they existed, and nobody, in Mary-
land or anywhere else, ever dreamed that
those delegates, who went to Philadelphia for
the purpose of suggesting those amendments
to the articles of confederation, would pro-
pose any new scheme of government. They
afterwards did agree upon a new form, and
it was ratified by the people of the 'several
States. I believe Maryland was one of the
very earliest, if not the very first, to make
the suggestion that such a Convention should
be called. State action, therefore, was at the
bottom of it. The "people of the United
States," never called the Convention to frame
the Constitution of the United States. The
people of the separate States, by State action,
without any rule, without any basis of repre-
sentation, sent their delegates there; those
delegates met, framed a Constitution, and
provided that it should be the supreme law—
among whom? Among all the States? Why,
sir, all the States were not represented in that
Convention, until a very late period. The
Constitution was to go into effect, whenever
it was ratified by nine States, as between the
States so ratifying it. You say this is a con-
solidated Government and has been so from
the first. I demand an answer to this ques-
tion: What would have been the political
position of the four States who might have
refused to ratify that Constitution, even if the
other nine had ratified it? I hold that they
were free sovereign, independent communi-
ties at that time. And I claim that if that is
acknowledged, I get the advantage of the
whole argument. |
Now, sir, what would have become of the
States not ratifying the Constitution ?
Where would they have been? What would
have been their status? The Convention
was to go into force, not over them; but
whenever ratified by nine States it was to go
into force as between the nine so ratifying it.
Suppose Maryland had nut ratified it and
Pennsylvania had. Where would we have
been to-day? Would we have been an ap-
panage, a province, a lost jurisdiction? I
apprehend we would have stood upon the
same foundation that the sovereignty of Great
Britain stands upon, except that we might
not have been as powerful; I have some
doubts even about that; but lam satisfied
we should have been equally happy. That
is the mode in which the Constitution was
adopted.
I find that I shall have to hurry over a
great deal of very important points that I
desire to make. One argument in regard to
this doctrine that we are one people—"the
people of the United States,"—the great ar-
gument is, that in the preamble of the Con-
stitution, it is said the Constitution was made
by the " people of the United States."
"We, the people of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide
for the common defence, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain
and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America."
It was my design to have read from this
book of Judge Upshur's, the most remarka-
bly clear and beautiful passage I have ever
met with in the whole course of my reaiding.
But I will state the substance of it. It is an
argument upon States' rights, and is absolute-
ly unanswerable, in the first place admit-
ting that the preamble does state that the
Constitution was framed by the people of the
United States. A preamble cannot control
the statute. The meaning and effect of a
statute must be controlled by its own lan-
guage. A preamble of itself has no weight
in bringing us towards a proper construction.
Suppose it had been stated in the preamble
that "the people of France, Great Britain,
Spain, Kamschatka, do form this Constitution
for the people of the United States." That
so far as it went, would be an arrangement,
pro tanto, to show that the people of those
countries formed the Constitution. But it
would have been contradicted by the facts
contained in the body of the Constitution
itself. That is sufficient as far as it goes.
But there is a historical fact connected
with this phrase, "we, the people of the
United States," and I am so particular about
it because that is at the bottom of all this
idea that the people of these United States
are a sovereign community—that they have
been the receivers of this sovereignty with |
