Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/723

 CH. XLIV.] country, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations. "We, the people of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America"—is a better recognition of popular rights, than volumes of those aphorisms, which make a principal figure in several of our state bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics, than in a constitution of government.

§ 1855. Upon the third point, it was said, that a minute detail of particular rights was certainly far less applicable to a constitution, designed to regulate the general political concerns of the nation, than to one, which had the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns. But (it was added) the argument might justly be carried further. It might be affirmed, that a bill of rights, in the sense and extent, which is contended for, was not only wholly unnecessary, but might even be dangerous. Such a bill would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and on this very account might afford a colourable pretext to claim more than was granted. For why (it might be asked) declare, that things shall not be done, which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given, by which restrictions may be imposed? It is true, that upon sound reasoning a declaration of this sort could not fairly be construed to imply a regulating power; but it