Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/75

 attended to the subject at all, ought, as it seems to me, to be perfectly satisfactory and conclusive; and should silence for ever, all those arguments in favor of consolidation, which are founded on the preamble to that instrument. I do not perceive with what propriety *it can be said, that the "people of the United States," formed the Constitution, since they neither appointed the convention, nor ratified their act, nor otherwise adopted it as obligatory upon them. Even if the preamble be entitled to all the influence which has been allowed to it, our author's construction of its language is not, as has already been remarked, the only one of which it is susceptible. "We, the people of the United States," may, without any violence to the rules of fair construction, mean "we, the people of the States united." In this acceptation, its terms conform to the history of the preamble itself, to that of the whole Constitution, and those who made it. In any other acceptation, they are either without meaning, or else they affirm what history proves to be false.

It would not, perhaps, have been deemed necessary to bestow quite so much attention on this part of the work, if it were not evident that the author himself considered it of great consequence, not as matter of history, but as warranting and controlling his construction of the Constitution, in some of its most important provisions. The argument is not yet exhausted, and I am aware that much of what I have said is trite, and that little, perhaps no part of it, is new. Indeed, the subject has been so often and so ably discussed, particularly in parliamentary debates, that it admits very few new views, and still fewer new arguments in support of old views. It is still, however, an open question, and there is nothing in the present condition of public opinion, to deprive it of any portion of its original importance. The idea that the people of these States were, while colonists, and, consequently, are now, "one people," in some sense which has never been explained, and to some extent which has never been defined, is constantly inculcated by those who are anxious to consolidate all the powers of the States in the federal government. It is remarkable, however, that scarcely one systematic argument, and very few attempts of any sort, have yet been made to prove this important position. Even the