CHAPTER V. The Constitution of 1787 a Compact. WAS the constitution a compact? Was it a compact between the States, or to which the States were the parties? Was it a compact from which any State might recede at pleasure? These three questions are perfectly distinct, and all the rules of clear thinking require that they should be so held in our minds, instead of being mixed up and confounded in our discussions. Yet Mr. Justice Story, in his long chapter on the "Nature of the Constitution," discusses these questions, not separately and distinctly, but all in one confused mass, to the no little perplexity and distraction of his own mind. He carries them all along together, and in the darkness and confusion occasioned by this mode of proceeding, he is frequently enabled to elude the force of his adversaries' logic. Thus, for instance, he sets out with the flat denial of the doctrine that the Constitution is a compact; and yet, when the evidences become too strong for resistance, or a cloud of witnesses rise up to confound him, he turns around, and instead of fairly admitting that the Constitution is a compact, asserts that if it is a compact it is not one between the States. When too hardly pressed on this position, replies, well, if it is a compact between the States it is not such a compact that it may be revoked at the pleasure of the parties. Thus, when he is driven from one position he falls back upon another, and finally rallies to a second, a third, and a fourth denial of the main proposi tion that the Constitution is a compact. Now, I intend to discuss each one of these questions distinctly and by itself; holding Mr. Justice Story to one and the same precise point, until it is either made good or else demolished. hope, in this way, to dispel the mists and fogs he has thrown around the subject, and to bring out the truth into a clear and unmistakable light. The same confusion of thought, and arising from the same source, pervades Mr. Webster's celebrated speech of Feb. 16, 1833; though it must be admitted, not to the same extent that it prevails in the "Commentaries" of Mr. Justice Story. Mr. Calhoun very justly complains of this want of clearness and precision in the positions of his great antagonist. "After a careful examination," says he, "of the notes which I took of what the Senator said, I am now at a loss to know whether, in the opinion of the Senator, our Constitution is a compact or not, though the almost entire argument of the Senator was directed to that point. At one time he would seem to deny directly and positively that it was a compact, while at another he would appear, in language not less strong, to admit that it was, ""* Mr. Webster emphatically and repeatedly denies both that a Constitution is a compact and also that a compact is a Constitution; or, in other words, he conceives that the natures of the two things are utterly incompatible with each other. He is very bold, and asserts that it is new language to call "the Constitution a compact." "This is the reason,' says he, "which makes it necessary to abandon the use of Constitutional language for a new vocabulary, and to substitute, in place of plain historical facts, a series of assumptions. This is the reason why it is necessary, to give new names to things, to speak of the Constitution, not as a Constitution, but as a compact, and * Mr. Calhoun's speech, Feb. 26, 1833. of the ratifications of the people not as ratifications, but as acts of accession."* Again, he complains of Mr. Calhoun, that "he introduces a new word of his own, viz., 'compact,' as importing the principal idea, and designed to play the principal part, and degrades Constitution into an insignificant idle epithet attached to compact. The whole then stands a Constitutional compact!" He is then particularly severe and eloquent upon the supposed outrage perpetrated on "our American political grammar," in thus degrading "CONSTITUTION" (the capitals are his own) from its rightful rank "as a noun substantive." But, after all, the plain, simple fact is, that this "new word," as Mr. Webster calls it, was as. familiar to the ears of the authors of the Constitution as any other in the vocabulary of the great Convention of 1787. The terms Constitution and compact are, indeed, twin words, and convertible in, the language of the fathers. Though "the term Constitutional affixes to the word compact no definite idea," says Mr. Webster, and in such connection "is void of all meaning," "yet it is easy, quite easy, to see why the gentleman uses it in these resolutions." Now, what is the reason, the deep design, that induces Mr. Calhoun to use an epithet "so void of all meaning"?. "He cannot open the book;" says Mr. Webster, "and look upon our written frame of government without seeing that it is called a Constitution. This may well be appalling to him." We cannot possibly imagine that Mr. Calhoun should, for one moment, have been disturbed or alarmed by such a discovery or revelation. It is certain that he nowhere betrays the least symptom of dismay at "the appalling" consideration that the Constitution is really a Constitution. That "noun substantive" seems to have inspired him with no sort of terror whatever. On the contrary, it appears to sit as easily on his political faith and to flow as familiarly from his lips as any other word in the lan*Speech, Feb. 16, 1838. guage. We can imagine, however, why the Northern States should wish to get rid of both the idea of a compact and of the word; why the powerful should wish to oblit+ erate and erase from the tablets of their memory every recollection and vestige of the solemn compact or bargain into which they had entered with the weak, but which they have never observed in good faith. It is perfectly certain that Mr. Webster's horror of the term compact, as applied to the Constitution, is of comparatively recent origin. It was wholly unknown to the fathers of the Constitution themselves. Mr. Gouverneur Morris, it is well known, was one of the most celebrated advocates for a strong national government in the Convention of 1787; and yet, in that assembly, he used the words "He came here to form a compact for the good of America. He was ready to do so with all the States. He hoped and believed that all would enter into such a compact. If they would not, he would be ready to join with any States that would. But as the compact was to be voluntary, it is in vain for the Eastern States to insist on what the Southern States will never agree to."* Thus, this celebrated representative of the State of Pennsylvania, and staunch advocate of a strong national government, did not hesitate to call the Constitution a compact into which the States were to enter. Indeed, no one, at that early day, either before the Constitution was adopted or afterwards, hesitated to call it a compact. Mr. Gerry, the representative of Massachusetts, says, "If nine out of thirteen (States) can dissolve the compact, six out of nine will be just as able to dissolve the new one hereafter." Here again the new Constitution is called a compact. "In the case of a union of people under one Constitution," says Mr. Madison, while contending for the ratification of the new Constitution by the people, "the nature of *"Madison Papers," p. 1081-2. the pact has always been understood to exclude such an interpretation."* Thus, in the Convention of 1787, Mr. Madison called the Constitution a compact; a word which he continued to apply to it during the whole course of his life. In the celebrated resolutions of Virginia, in 1798, Mr. Madison used these words, "That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties." Again, in his almost equally celebrated letter to Mr. Everett, in 1830, he calls "the Constitution" "a compact among the States in their highest sovereign capacity." In the same letter Mr. Madison speaks of the States as "the parties to the Constitutional compact;" using the very expression which is so offensive to Mr. Webster's new "political grammar." Nay, it was only three years before, in the great debate on Foote's resolutions, that Mr. Webster himself had, like every one else, spoken of the Constitution as a compact, as a bargain which was obligatory on the parties to it. "It is the original bargain," says he, in that debate; "the compact-let it stand; let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefits to be hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the Constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is." Nor is this all. He there indignantly repels, both for "himself and for the North," "accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the Constitutional compact." Yet, in the course of three short years, he discovers that there is no compact to be evaded and no bargain to be violated! All such trammels are given to the winds, and Behemoth is free! How sudden and how wonderful this revolution in the views and in the vocabulary of the great orator of New England!t * Madison Papers, p. 1184. The great mind of Mr. Webster was in general more like the |