Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/383

 CH. III.] to do. The question is, whether they have done it. If they have, it becomes obligatory and binding upon all the states.

§ 372. It is not, then, by artificial reasoning founded upon theory, but upon a careful survey of the language of the constitution itself, that we are to interpret its powers, and its obligations. We are to treat it, as it purports on its face to be, as a of government; and we are to reject all other appellations, and definitions of it, such, as that it is a compact, especially as they may mislead us into false constructions and glosses, and can have no tendency to instruct us in its real objects.