Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/506

496 Again, as these societies made a voluntary union, they could not, without a supervening revolution, be subject to involuntary and indissoluble relations. Nor could "the parties to the compact" — as Hamilton called them — after having established an agency, become subordinate and allegiant to it, without treasonable violence or fraud.

In fine, if the pernicious theory in question be maintained, we shall have reached a subversion of the republic — a change from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of their agency — "the very way," says the great Burke, "in which all the free juagistracies of the world have been perverted from their purposes"

In the foregoing quotation from "Davis and Lee" it is shown that the Convention of States repudiated the national theory [see also R. of R., Part III, ch. VII] ; let us now see how the Constitution annihilates it.

I. The States were, in the Constitution, designated with proper nouns, as preexistent political societies, each with its own name, geography, people, organism, and political authority; and as each was agreed by all to be sovereign, and as no change was provided for or hinted at in the instrument, it is absurd to suppose that any was made. Hence we may assert, as Hamilton did, that the States remained " the parties to the compact " and the "essential component parts of the Union." [Fed. 85; II Ell. Deb. 304.]

II. It is absurd to suppose that the named societies of people — viz.. New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, 'et als — started in the work of constituting self-government, possessing the "all-power," and all original and inherent rights given by the Deity; and ended the work only possessed of privileges under their own Constitution, and with delegative duties imposed on them by superior authority. No one can believe such theory.

Ill As the States, by their respective ratifications, established what they together had devised, they necessarily reserved — i. e., kept back what they did not delegate in the language used ; hence it is alike false and foolish to talk about rights reserved to them in the Constitution, and still more so for such expounders to call themselves "State-rights men." Reservations thus made to the States would be, at best, but privileges."

IV. Citizenship is a status, which the Constitution recognizes as preëstablished, " The people of the United States" are, in fact, and