Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/110

 102 powers and qualifications from the constitution, and neither created by, dependent upon, nor controllable by, the states. It is no original prerogative of state power to appoint a representative, a senator, or president for the Union. Those officers owe their existence and functions to the united voice of the whole, not of a portion, of the people. Before a state can assert the right, it must show, that the constitution has delegated and recognised it. No state can say, that it has reserved, what it never possessed.

§ 627. Besides; independent of this, there is another fundamental objection to the reasoning. The whole scope of the argument is, to show, that the legislature of the state has a right to prescribe new qualifications. Now, if the state in its political capacity had it, it would not follow, that the legislature possessed it. That must depend upon the powers confided to the state legislature by its own constitution. A state, and the legislature of a state, are quite different political beings. Now it would be very desirable to know, in which part of any state constitution this authority, exclusively of a national character, is found delegated to any state legislature. But this is not all. The amendment does not reserve the powers to the states exclusively, as political bodies; for the language of the amendment is, that the powers not delegated, &c. are reserved to the states, or to the people. To justify, then, the exercise of the power by a state, it is indispensable to show, that it has not been reserved to the people of the state. The people of the state, by adopting the constitution, have declared what their will is, as to the qualifications for office. And here the maxim, if ever, must apply. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius. It might further be urged, that the constitution, being the act of the whole