Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/288

 as independent and sovereign communities, the ultimate power of the whole system resided, and from them the whole system emanated. Their first act was, to ordain and establish their respective separate constitutions and governments — each by itself, and for itself — without concert or agreement with the others; and their next, after the failure of the confederacy, was to ordain and establish the constitution and government of the United States, in the same way in every respect, as has been shown; except that it was done by concert and agreement with each other. That this high, this supreme power, has never been either delegated to, or vested in the separate governments of the States, or the federal government — and that it is, therefore, one of the powers declared, by the 10th ART. of amendments, to be reserved to the people of the respective States; and that, of course, it still resides with them, will hardly be questioned. It must reside somewhere. No one will assert that it is extinguished. But, according to the fundamental principles of our system, sovereignty resides in the people, and not in the government; and if in them, it must be in them, as the people of the several States; for, politically speaking, there is no other known to the system. It not only resides in them, but resides in its plenitude, unexhausted and unimpaired. If proof be required, it will be found in the fact — which cannot be controverted, so far as the United States are concerned — that the people of the several States, acting in the same capacity and in the same way, in which they ordained and established the