two vast empires! Is not such legislation truly won derful? Instead of weighing every word with the utmost care, and then depositing it in the Constitution as under the solemn sanction of an oath, the Convention trusts the style of the instrument to a fine writer, who cunningly gives expression to his own views in opposition to those of the assembly! "In a play, or a moral," says Jeremy Bentham, "an improper word is but a word; and the impropriety, whether noted or not, is attended with no consequences. In a body of laws-especially of laws given as Constitutional ones—an improper word would be a national calamity, and civil war may be the consequences of it. Out of one foolish word may start a thousand daggers." How true, and how fearfully has this truth been illustrated by the history of the United States!

But although Governor Morris was capable of such a fraud on the Convention, we have no good reason to believe he intended one, by the substitution of the words, "We, the people of the United States," for the enumeration of all the States by name. He has nowhere confessed to any such thing; and besides he did not understand his own words as they are so confidently understood by Story and Webster. Every rational inquirer after truth should, it seems to me, be curious to know what sense Governor Morris attached to the words in question, since it was by his pen that they were introduced into the preamble of the Constitution. Nor will such curiosity be diminished, but rather increased, by the fact that he did, in some cases, aim to foist his own private views into the Constitution of his country. How, then, did Governor Morris understand the words, "We, the people of the United States"? Did he infer from these words that the Constitution was not a compact between States, or that it was established by the people of America, and not by the States? I answer this question in the words of Governor Morris himself. "The Constitution," says he, "was a compact,

not between individuals, but between political societies, the people, not of America, but of the United States, each enjoying sovereign power and of course equal rights." Language could not possibly be more explicit. Nor could it be more evident than it is, that Govenor Morris, the very author of the words in question, entertained precisely the same view of their meaning as that maintained by Mr. Calhoun and his school. This point was, indeed, made far too clear by the proceedings of the Convention of 1787 for any member of that body to entertain the shadow of a doubt in relation to it. Nor can any one read these proceedings as they deserve to be read, without agreeing with Governor Morris, that the authors of the Constitution designed it to be ratified, as in fact it was, by "the people of the United States," not as individuals, but as "political societies, each enjoying sovereign power, and of course equal rights." Or, in other words, without seeing that "the Constitution was a compact," not between individuals, "but between political societies," between sovereign States. This, in the next chapter, I hope and expect to make perfectly clear, by bringing to view the origin of the words "We, the people," and by showing the sense in which they were universally understood and used by the members of the Convention of 1787 in the very act of framing the Constitution of the United States. *"Life and Writings," vol. iii., p. 193.

CHAPTER X.

The Constitution of 1787 a Compact between the States. The Language of the Constitution.

THE Convention of 1787 did, as we have seen, refuse to call the government a national one, and gave it the name of "the government of the United States." Did they then make it a national one by enacting that it should be ordained by "the whole people of the United States in the aggregate" as one political society? Again, when it was proposed in the Convention to ordain the Constitution by "the people of the United States in the aggregate," in one general Convention assembled, the motion failed, as we have seen, to secure a second. Did Governor Morris, then, the author of that proposal, achieve by his style what he failed to accomplish by his motion? If so, what should we think of the incompetency of the Convention?

Nor was this all. For Madison introduced a motion which required "a concurrence of a majority of both the States and the people"* at large to establish the Constitution; and this proposition was rejected by the Convention. All these motions, designed to connect the new government with a national origin, were lost, and the decree went forth that the Constitution should be established by the accession of nine States, each acting for itself alone, and to be bound only by its own voluntary act. Now, the question is, was all this action of the Convention overruled and defeated by the committee on style, p. 1470.

**

The Madison Papers,"

or rather by its penman, Gouverneur Morris? If he formed such design, then it must be admitted that the Northern theory of the Constitution was conceived in fraud and brought forth in iniquity; and every honest man at the North ought to be ashamed both of its origin and its existence. But, as we have already seen, Governor Morris did not understand his own words, "We, the people," as they are understood by the more modern expounders of the Constitution at the North. Hence we have no reason to believe that he intended, in this case at least, a fraud on the design and will of the Convention.

Was the whole thing done then, and the nature of the Constitution transformed, by a slip of the pen, or by accident? After all their opposition both to the name and to the thing did the Convention, by sheer oversight, blunder into the construction of a purely national government, by permitting it to be established by the people of America as one grand political community? If Mr. Justice Story's view of the words, "We, the people of the United States," be correct, how did it happen that the opponents of such a mode of ratification said absolutely nothing? The whole instrument, as amended by the committee on style, was read in the hearing of the Convention, beginning with the preamble, and yet the words, "We, the people of the United States," now deemed so formidable to the advocates of State sovereignty, did not raise a single whisper of opposition. How could this have happened if the words in question were supposed to mean the people of America, or the whole people of the United States as one political society? Were Mason, and Martin, and Paterson, and Ellsworth, all too dull to perceive that meaning, which is so perfectly obvious to Mr. Justice Story, and which he imagines that nothing but the most purblind obstinacy can resist? Were all the friends of the States, as independent sovereignties, asleep on their posts while Gouverneur Morris thus transformed the nature of the Constitution, with

out knowing it himself, by causing it to emanate, not from the States, but from the people of America as one nation? No. Not one of these suppositions is the true one. The whole mystery is explained in the proceedings of the Convention of 1787, as exhibited in "The Madison Papers;" an explanation which, however, has hitherto been most unaccountably overlooked. We may there find the real meaning of the words in question, and see why they gave no alarm to the advocates of State sovereignty.

If we cast our eyes all along the subject of "the mode of ratification," ranging from page 735 to page 1632 of "The Madison Papers," we shall perceive that the question, whether the Constitution should be ratified by the people of "the United States in the aggregate," or by the several States, was not considered by the Convention at all. No such question was before the Convention. It was neither mooted nor considered by them. The error of Story and Webster is, that they construe the first clause of the Constitution as if it referred to one question; whereas, in fact, it referred to quite another and a far different question-that is, they construed this clause in profound darkness as to the origin of its words, as well as to their use and application in the Convention of 1787. If they had understood them as actually and uniformly used or applied by the framers of the Constitution, then they could neither have deceived themselves nor the people of the North. If, indeed, they had been members of that Convention, or had only examined its proceedings, they would have seen why the staunch advocates of State sovcignty raised not even the slightest whisper of opposition to the words, "We, the people." Or, if Patrick Henry had been a member of that assembly, then he could not have exclaimed, as he did, "Why say We, the people, and not We, the States?"-an exclamation so often quoted by Story, Webster, and the whole Northern school of politicians as a conclusive authority-for then he would have