Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/87

  But little importance, however, ought to be attached to reasoning of this kind. Those who contend that our Constitution is a compact, very properly place their principles upon much higher ground. They say that the Constitution is a compact, because it was made by sovereign States, and because that is the only mode in which sovereign States treat with one another. The conclusion follows irresistibly from the premises; and those who would deny the one, are bound to disprove the other. Our adversaries begin to reason at the very point at which reasoning becomes no longer necessary. Instead of disproving our premises, they assume that they are wrong, and then triumphantly deny our conclusion also. If we establish that the Constitution was made by the States, and that they were, at the time, distinct, independent and perfect sovereignties, it follows that they could not treat with one another, even with a view to the formation of a new common government, except in their several and sovereign characters. They must have maintained the same character when they entered upon that work, and throughout the whole progress of it. Whatever the government may be, therefore, in its essential character, whether a federative or a consolidative government, it is still a compact, or the result of a compact, because those who made it could not make it in any other way. In determining its essential character, therefore, we are bound to regard it as a compact, and to give it such a construction as is consistent with that idea. We are not to presume that the parties to it designed to change the character in which they negotiated with one another. Every fair and legitimate inference is otherwise. Its sovereignty is the very last thing which a nation is willing to surrender; and nothing short of the clearest proof can warrant us in concluding that it has surrendered it. In all cases, therefore, where the language and spirit of the Constitution are doubtful, and even where their most natural construction would be in favor of consolidation, (if there be any such case,) we should still incline against it, and in favor of the rights of the States, unless no other construction can be admitted.

*Having disposed of this preliminary question, we now approach the Constitution itself. I affirm that it is, in its structure, a federative and not a consolidated government; that 