Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/182

168 the affirmative of that proposition; and that Mr. Webster combated such affirmative in that epoch-making speech of his in 1833 even more memorable and able than that delivered by him in his perhaps more famous debate with Mr. Payne. Indeed, it seems to have been assumed by Mr. Calhoun, as an elemental and unassailable proposition, and conceded by Mr. Webster (strange as it may seem now, reviewing the question from his standpoint), that it would inevitably result from this that, whatever sovereign States may have bound together, they could put asunder.

But did this conclusion necessarily follow?

Viewing the question in the light of past history alone, it would seem that it did. Assigning to sovereign States the attributes therefore considered as inhering in the very nature of sovereignty, it would seem that the States of 1787 could not, "in order to form a more perfect union," or for any other purpose, yield and surrender any portion of their sovereignty in such a manner as to bind posterity.

Virginia, indeed, that there might be left no doubt as to her conception of this matter, acting for her people, in her ordinance of ratification of the Federal Constitution, expressly reserved the right to resume the powers delegated to the Federal Government, "whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression."

The idea of the individual citizen having surrendered, absolutely, certain natural rights, in order that civil society or government might be formed, under the theory of the "original contract," the "social contract," the "social compact," or the "implied social compact," discussed by numerous European writers, some treating such "contract" or "compact" as having been in fact made, some as wholly imaginary and some as implied, was familiar to the framers of our Federal Constitution. But the conception that a sovereign State could make such surrender, absolutely, of certain sovereign rights, in order to form civil society or government, was, at the time of the formation and adoption of our Federal Constitution, wholly new.