Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/88

. They deal in no ambiguities or double entendres. They exhaust enumeration, and when they have done so, they comprehend any and every possible residuum, by general words. All the powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the People. They could not define sovereignty, for none can do so. It comprehends not only all political power, that ever has been granted, but all that ever can be granted. I certainly mean no irreverence, when speaking of human sovereignty I say it is the one " I am," which in this sublime annunciation of its own existence, assumes to itself every possible political power, and every possible political attribute, which belongs to human omnipotence, whether the same has been called into action or not. Vain would be all reservations, if the grant conveyed any power like this, since it would authorize the grantee, to annul the reservation, the moment it was adopted. No man, it is believed, can suppose that the Constitution ever designed to transfer any such authority as this, to the government it creates, which therefore, cannot be a sovereign. Nor can the "Nation" whose existence is imagined in the Proclamation, claim any thing under this grant: for it is neither made to, or by this Nation; and if it had been, provided the name of this Nation is the "United States," it is from their grasp, the last Amendment expressly declares the ungranted powers to be reserved.

Then tell me ye casuists of any school, if you can, what is there to which this reservation of political power can apply, but sovereignty, including as that necessarily does, freedom and independence? Tell me, likewise, if you can, in whose favor this reservation exists, if not in favor of the People of the several States in their high character of a body corporate and politic, who possessed this sovereignty, when this Constitution was adopted by them in that character? You cannot say, that it applies to any enumerated right; for all these are reserved by the preceding Amendment.—You cannot say, that it applies to any other political power ungranted by this Constitution, and which had been previously granted to the State governments: for all such, if not prohibited to these governments by this Constitution, and so cancelled and annulled, are the subjects of the former part of this reservation