Page:Doctrine of State Rights.djvu/6

 belonged alone to the people, and the resolutions of ratification of the Constitution by the States show whether the purpose was to transfer the power or only to authorize its use.

The usual form of ratification was as in the following examples: "The delegates of the people of the State of New Hampshire, in the name and behalf of the people of the State of New Hampshire," etc., and "the delegates of the people of Virginia, for and in behalf of the people of Virginia," etc., do assent to and ratify the said Constitution for the United States of America.

As had been done by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in ratifying the Constitution, Virginia required certain amendments as a more explicit guarantee against consolidation, and accompanied the proposition with the following declaration: "That the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them," etc., etc. For whom were the delegates commissioned to speak? Only for the people of Virginia. By whom had grants been made? By the States severally, and the assertion could only mean that to each of them all undelegated power remained. Indeed, there was no other repository from which it could have been drawn; therefore no other in which it could have been said to remain.

New York was the eleventh State to assent to the compact of union, and her ratification was made more than seven months after that of Delaware, and was accompanied by a declaration of the principles on which her assent was given, from which the following extract is made: "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness: that every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, by the said Constitution, clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they may have granted the same," etc.

Here, even more distinctly than before, is answered the question as to who were by whom the powers might be reassumed. Provision had been made for several modes of amending the Constitution by the joint action of the States, and if it had