Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/83

 other powers granted expressly, are not left to necessary implication, but are made the subjects of a positive grant, that sovereignty, the greatest of all human powers, would be left to mere inference, and to inference too from the grant of a few only of its many incidents, and these not necessary to its existence. The shadow may follow the substance by which it is caused, but that substance can never follow its own shadow, except when hurried on by the crazed brain of a madman.

But this is not all. Notwithstanding it was conceded on all hands, that the Federal Constitution was but a grant of enumerated powers, and of course would convey only what it enumerated, yet such was the jealousy felt by the States, that while adopting it, a number of the different conventions by whom it was ratified, to guard against the possible misconstruction and abuse of the powers therein granted, proposed various amendments to it. In consequence of this, the very first Congress which assembled under this Constitution, at its very first session, acting under the authority given to them by the fifth article, proposed these amendments to the Legislatures of the several States, by whom ten of them were ratified, in the mode pointed out in this article. These amendments thereupon became "valid to all intents and purposes, as parts of this Constitution." Two of them, the Ninth and the Tenth, are in the following words: Ninth—The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People.

Tenth—The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.

Many reflections are suggested by these amendments, which have such direct bearing upon the matter I am now examining, that I will briefly state them. The first is, that although these amendments appear to be the joint work of Congress and of the State Legislatures only, yet in truth and in feet, they proceed from the People of the several States. They were suggested by many of the Conventions of the People who adopted the Constitution, and in consequence of these suggestions, were proposed by the first Congress, to the Legislatures of the several States, merely to satisfy the forms of the Constitution, and to give effect to