Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/360

 320 in their political capacity, a constitution, though originating in consent, becomes, when ratified, obligatory, as a fundamental ordinance or law. The constitution of a confederated republic, that is, of a national republic formed of several states, is, or at least may be, not less an irrevocable form of government, than the constitution of a state formed and ratified by the aggregate of the several counties of the state.

§ 353. If it had been the design of the framers of the constitution or of the people, who ratified it, to consider it a mere confederation, resting on treaty stipulations, it is difficult to conceive, that the appropriate terms should not have been found in it. The United States were no strangers to compacts of this nature. They had subsisted to a limited extent before the revolution. The articles of confederation, though in some few respects national, were mainly of a pure federative character, and were treated as stipulations between states for many purposes independent and sovereign. And yet (as has been already seen) it was deemed a political heresy to maintain, that under it any state had a right