⚫ and they must have been enumerated, like the rights given to the federal government. As the reserved rights were not given by an American nation, the states, as corporations, can have none. To find receptacles for the reservation, we must find rights; and if we can find rights, as they were not derived from the sovereignty of an American nation, we must find some other sovereignty having power to create them. We are therefore reduced to the alternative of admitting the sovereignties of the states, or allowing that the states are incorporated subjects of an imaginary American nation, and liab'e to be modified or abolished in virtue of its sovereignty.

A corporate character implies a derivation from, and subjection to, some sovereignty; and a power to modify or abolish this corporate character, designates the exact place where the sove reignty resides. The federal government is derived from, and may be modified or abolished by the states; and its corporate character is its only tenure, good only on account of the validity of the sovereignties by which it was bestowed. The style of the constitution, however hackneyed by construction, admits the fact explicitly. It is not "We, the people of the united corpo"rations of New-Hampshire," &c. Could corporations, having no political powers, both create and retain the right of altering or resuming political powers? If not, the gift and limitation of federal powers, united with an actual exercise of the sovereign power of resuming and modifying them, point both to a sove reign and a corporate character. If we should admit that the sovereignty thus exercised, is spurious, its issue must also be spurious; and if we contend for the legitimacy of the issue, the parental competency to produce it, must be admitted.

These observations are alone sufficient to refute the positions assumed in the convention, and revived by one of the people, as the only basis for a supreme national government, contended for and denied by the parties for and against it. The first party assumed the ground work of one of the people, "that on the "meeting of the convention, all the elements of political power "returned to the people, to receive a new modification and dis "tribution by their sovereign will." That which had never been possessed, could not be returned. Did a consolidated

American nation ever possess all the elements, or any elements, of political power? A few gentlemen made a nation, only that they might make a consolidated government, either of a monarchical or national complexion. The federal party denied that any

of the elements of political power were dissolved by the meeting of the convention; asserted that the meeting itself flowed from existing political power; and that its proceedings must be exposed to the ratification and future alteration of this state political power, thus recognised as existing. It was a strange dissolution of political elements, which no body perceived; and as credible, as if we were told that an eclipse of the sun had produced total darkness for several months, though we were all daily enjoying its light and warmth. If all the ele ments of political power ceased on the meeting of the conven tion, those only can exist, which were revived by the constitution. But it does not revive, and only reserves, state rights. Powers which were dead, could not be reserved. If the convention had not framed a constitution, or the states had not ratifed it, would no elements of political power have existed?

The meeting of the state conventions must have been peculiarly inauspicious, and provokingly irksome, under this doctrine. All the elements of political power were gone. Whither? To these conventions? No. They could only ratify or reject the constitution. To that or to this dissolution of political power, their alternative was confined. They could not revive any of these elements, not revived by that federal instrument. Had the conventions of states been equivalent to the convention of a consolidated nation, or a representation of an American people, they might have modified political power without restriction; but as they were only state organs for expressing a state opinion, acceding to or rejecting a federal compact between states, they. had no power, if they were so inclined, to change the existing political elements into a national government, republican or monarchical. As these conventions did not receive all the elements of political power, but were limited to a single act, they were not the representatives of an American nation, and thence arises a complete refutation of the construction which supposes that the words "We, the people of the United States," had any refer

ence to a consolidated nation; since the convention of such people would have constituted an unrestricted element of political power. The truth is, that the idea of a consolidated nation crept out of the convention, where it was invented before the state conventions were even mentioned, and settled itself in the minds of those gentlemen who still have in view one or the other of the forms of government it was started to produce, But if it is not too late to revive it, after the rejection of these forms, and after the establishment of a federal government, founded upon the co-equal sovereignties of the states, the con stitution is rotten at its base, and the superstructure must be forever tottering.

Let one of the gentlemen who advocated the project for a national government, expound the object. Mr. Morris, in opposi tion to a federal compact, observed "that a government by 66 compact, was no government at all." This was true, if the states were corporations, because under that character, they could form no government, federal or national. Compact and power are the different elements of forms of government, and one prin ciple is opposed to the other. This profound politician rejects compact, because he knew that the rival principle must prevail, if a national government was established; since power only, and that of the highest degree, could govern a consolidated nation spread over an immense surface. Compact being nothing, pow. er, which is something, comes out naturally as the basis of the national government he preferred, and the way is smoothed for playing this deadly engine upon the state governments, and all the rights of the people, each and every one of which are founded in compact.

"Discordant clamours and lawless resistance." Words constantly applied by tyranny to the people, and by every political department, to another, which it wishes to suppress. It is remarkable that mobs and tyrants are supplied by forms of government resting upon power, and not upon compact, with arguments exactly of the same weight. Without mobs, tyrants will oppress; without tyrants, mobs will disorganize; both, there fore, are necessary in governments resting upon power, as a sort of mutual check. No remedy exists in most countries against

sedition, but despotism, nor against despotism, but sedition. Therefore both with equal propriety assert, that they commit their respective atrocitics for the sake of an ultimate good. Such is the ground occupied by the advocates for a national supremacy in a federal government. It is necessary to suppress "the dis"cordant clamours and lawless resistance of the state rulers." When this is effected by substituting power for compact, the same argument will be applied to the people with infinitely more plausibility. The discordant clamours and lawless resist ance of a populace, will be better reasoning for adding link after link to power, to suppress the rights of the people, than it is for suppressing the rights of the states. If the state governments ought to lose their rights because they may be discordant, clamorous, and lawless, it follows very clearly that the people ought 'to lose their's for the same reason. But this foreign mode of reasoning was necessary to establish a foreign principle of government, which the constitution endeavoured to shun, by substituting for the eternal collisions between a populace and a despotism, the mediatorial check of state governments; and by establishing a division of power for the purpose of preventing its accumulation, by which discordant clamours and lawless resistance are invariably provoked. As it is a political axiom, that' great concentrated power begets popular commotion, and that popular commotion begets great concentrated power, the constitution relied upon a sounder check to prevent both, in the state governments. There cannot be a more direct advance towards monarchy, than the dissolution of the orderly and organized control of the state governments, and an exclusive dependence upon the control of the people; because the very first popular commotion excited by an oppressive or partial law, would furnish a pretext for its introduction. To talk, therefore, of an American people, as sufficiently able and willing to act in concert, so as to furnish a security against the effects of a supreme concentrated power, and to render the mutual control of the state and federal departments unnecessary for the preservation of liberty, to my mind conveys the idea of great ignorance or of great ambition.

The artifice of destroying the rights of the people, under the mask of vindicating them, is as old as government itself. If the

people of the United States should constitute themselves into one nation, the question would still occur, which was the best mode for preserving liberty, that of dividing or concentrating the pow ers of government? The election would lie, in fact, between a disorderly and lawless resistance of mobs, and the orderly and constitutional resistance of state governments. Suppose a majority on one side of the United States, to oppress a minority on the other. Would this probable and meditated evil be best controlled by mobs or state governments? The Federalist eulogises the latter mode of control, as the distinguishing superiority of our system for preserving the rights of the people. A sufficient mode of preventing geographical districts from being oppressed, must be found in all extensive countries, or they will be oppressed. Is it better to intrust this indispensable office to mobs or self-constituted combinations, than to organized departments? Which will act with most knowledge, discretion, legality, and effect, in maintaining the rights of the people, mobs or state governments? In a country so extensive as the United States, we must have one or the other, to countervail the propensity of great concentrated power to oppress, from ambition, avarice, or local ignorance; and the state governments exposed to the control of the people in each state, and to the power of threefourths of the states to amend the constitution, is infinitely preferable to insurrections, exposed only to the control of physical force.

I have reserved an argument to face the undisguised doctrine of One of the People, that a power in the state governments to sustain state rights, is a diminution of their liberty; and the same argument, if it is just, will overturn the whole mass of more complicated assertions, advanced to establish a concentrated supremacy. Let us again select the state territorial right, from the rest of the reserved rights. Can Congress, the supreme court, or a concurrence of the whole federal government, abridge the territorial rights of the states without their consent? Why not? Because these rights are vested in the people of each state, of which they are not to be divested, without the consent of their state representatives. Suppose that an abridgment of state territory should be attempted by all or either of these self-consti