Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/324

 284 this subordination, we must go back as far as January, 1774, when the thirteen states existed constitutionally, in the condition of thirteen British colonies, yet, de facto, the people of them exercised original, sovereign power in their institution in 1774, of the continental congress; and, especially, in June, 1775, then vesting in it the great national powers, that will be described; scarcely any of which were resumed. The result will show, that, on revolutionary principles, the general government was, by the sovereign acts of this people, first created de novo, and de facto instituted; and, by the same acts, the people vested in it very extensive powers, which have ever remained in it, modified and defined by the articles of confederation, and enlarged and arranged anew by the constitution of the United States—2d. that the state governments and states, as free and independent states, were, July 4th, 1776, created by the general government, empowered to do it by the people, acting on revolutionary principles, and in their original, sovereign capacity; and that all the state governments, as such, have been instituted during the existence of the general government, and in subordination to it, and two thirds of them since the constitution of the United States was ordained and established by all the people thereof, in that sovereign capacity. These state governments have been, by the people of each state, instituted under, and, expressly or impliedly, in subordination to the general government, which is expressly recognized by all to be supreme law; and as the power of the whole is, in the nature of things, superior to the power of a part, other things bring equal, the power of a state, a part, is inferior to the power of all the states. Assertions, that each of the twenty-four states is completely sovereign, that is, as sovereign as Russia, or Prance, of course as sovereign as all the states, and that this sovereignty is above judicial cognizance, merit special attention."

§ 315. It is a written compact. Considered as a federal compact or alliance between the states, there is nothing new or singular in this circumstance, as all national compacts since the invention of letters have probably been reduced to that form. But considered in the light of an original social compact, the American Revolution seems to have given birth to this new political phenomenon. In every state a written constitution was framed, and adopted by the people both in their individual and sovereign capacity and character.