Page:Doctrine of State Rights.djvu/4

 Mr. Madison, in The Federalist, to the question, "On what principle the confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it?" answers: "By recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed."

Thus the matter stood when the Constitution to form a more perfect union was adopted, not, as has been most unjustifiably asserted, by the people of the United States in mass, but by the people of the States, each acting in its own convention and ratifying at different dates, the first being December 7, 1787, the last May 29, 1790. In view of facts so generally known, or (if not so) accessible to every reader of American history, it is surprising that some have contended that the Union was formed by the people of the United States as one body politic.

Though the States by a voluntary compact created a general government and delegated to it enumerated powers, reserving all else to themselves, it has been attempted to deduce from these limited grants a supremacy for the agent over the States, and, consequently, to deny to the States of the Union the sovereignty they possessed as States of the confederation. No one has attempted to show by what grant of the Constitution it can be claimed that the States have surrendered their sovereignty, and it seems absurd to assume that by implication the great object for which our fathers staked all save honor could have been lost. But they were too watchful to leave the question open for argument. Therefore, though the body of the instrument was thought by its framers to be sufficiently explicit in its limitation of the powers of the general government to those expressly delegated, yet, in an abundance of caution, almost contemporaneously with the ratification of the compact, two amendments were proposed and adopted in the following words:

"Article IX. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

"Article X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."