Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/165

 but by the people themselves — that they are parties to it — that each State, in ratifying it, was considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and is bound only by its own voluntary act — that, in consequence, the constitution itself is federal and not national — that, if it had been formed by the people as one nation or community, the will of the majority of the whole people of the Union would have bound the minority — that the idea of a national government involves in it, not only authority over individual citizens, but an indefinite supremacy over all persons and things, so far as they are objects of lawful government — that among the people consolidated into one nation, this supremacy is completely vested in the government; that State governments, and all local authorities, are subordinate to it, and may be controlled, directed, or abolished by it at pleasure — and, finally, that the States are regarded, by the constitution, as distinct, independent, and sovereign.

How strange, after all these admission, is the conclusion that the government is partly federal and partly national! It is the constitution which determines the character of the government. It is impossible to conceive how the constitution can be exclusively federal (as it is admitted, and has been clearly proved to be) and the government partly federal and partly national. It would be just as easy to conceive how a constitution can be exclusively monarchical, and the government partly monarchical,