Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/306

 adopted by the convention. While it affords sufficient facility, it guards against too much, in amending the constitution — and thereby unites stability with the capacity of adjusting itself to all such changes as may become necessary; and thus combines all the requisites that are necessary in the amending power. It hardly admits of a doubt, that these combined reasons — the conviction that it possessed all the requisites for such a power, in a higher degree than any other proportion — with the force of the two precedents above explained, induced the convention to adopt it.

Possessing these, it possesses all the requisites, of course, to render the power at once safe in itself, and sufficient to effect the objects for which it was intended. It is safe; because the proportion is sufficiently large to prevent a dominant portion of the Union, or combination of the States, from using the amending power as an instrument to make changes in the constitution, adverse to the interests and rights of the weaker portion of the Union, or a minority of the States. It may not, in this respect, be as perfectly safe as it would be in the unmodified state in which it ordained and established the constitution; but, for all practical purposes, it is believed to be safe as an amending power. It is difficult to conceive a case, where so large a portion as three-fourths of the States would undertake to insert a power, by way of amendment, which, instead of improving and perfecting the constitution, would deprive the remaining fourth of any right, essentially belonging to them as members of the