Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/79

 controlling. If the States are parties as sovereign States, then it follows, as a necessary consequence, that each of them has the right which belongs to every sovereignty, to construe its own contracts and agreements, and to decide upon its own rights and powers. I shall take occasion, in a subsequent part of this review, to enter more fully into the question, who is the common umpire. The statement here given, of the leading point of difference between the great political parties of the country, is designed only to show that the author's proposition does not involve it. That proposition may mislead the judgment of the reader, but cannot possibly enlighten it, in regard to the true nature of the Constitution.

He has been scarcely less unfortunate in the next proposition. Taking his words in their most enlarged sense, he is probably correct in his idea, though he is not accurate in his language; but in the sense in which his own reasoning shows that he himself understands them, his proposition is wholly untenable. If, by the words "stipulations to that effect," he means simply that the effect must necessarily result from the provisions of the Constitution, he has merely asserted a truism which no one will dispute with him. Certainly, if it does not result from the nature of all government, that it is a compact, and if there be nothing in our Constitution to show that it is so, then it is not a compact. His own reasoning, however, shows that he means by the word "stipulations," something in the nature of express agreement or declaration; and, in that sense, the proposition is obviously untrue, and altogether defective as a statement for argument. It is very possible that our Constitution may be a compact, even though it contain no express agreement or declaration so denominating it, and *though it may not "result from the nature and objects of a frame of government," that it is so; and this simply because it may "result from the nature and objects of our government" that it is a compact, whether such be the result of other governments or not. If the author designed to take this view of the subject, the examination which he has given of the Constitution, in reference to it, is scarcely as extended and philosophical as we had a right to expect from him. He has not even alluded to the frame and structure of the government in its several