Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/388

366 of an amendment providing a method for dissolving the existing Federal tie, whereupon such method would be applied so as to form new unions, or permit each State to become an absolutely sovereign and independent commonwealth. The power of the people of the United States appears competent to effect this, should it ever be desired, in a perfectly legal way, just as the British Parliament is legally competent to re-divide Great Britain into the sixteen or eighteen independent kingdoms which existed within the island in the eighth century.

The amendments made by the above process (A + X) to the Constitution have been in all fifteen in number. These have been made on four occasions, and fall into four groups, two of which consist of one amendment each. The first group, including ten amendments made immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, ought to be regarded as a supplement or postscript to it, rather than as changing it. They constitute what the Americans, following the English precedent, call a Bill of Rights, securing the individual citizen and the States against the encroachments of Federal power. The second and third groups, if a single amendment can be properly called a group (viz. amendments xi. and xii.) are corrections of minor defects which had disclosed themselves in the working of the Constitution. The fourth group is the only one which marked a political crisis and registered a political victory. It comprises three amendments (xiii. xiv. xv.) which forbid slavery, define citizenship, secure the suffrage of citizens against attempts by States to discriminate to the injury of particular classes, and extend Federal protection to those citizens who may suffer from the operation of certain kinds of unjust State laws. These three amendments are the outcome of the War of Secession, and were needed in order to confirm and secure for the future its results. The requisite majority of States was obtained under conditions altogether abnormal, some of the lately conquered States ratifying while actually controlled by the northern armies, others as the price which they were obliged