The absurdities flowing from the Doctrine that the Constitution is not a Compact between the States, but was made by the People of America as one Nation.

WHEN I come to consider "the sovereignty of the people," about which so much has been said, we shall see the fallacy of the position, which is everywhere assumed by Mr. Webster and his school, that "the aggregate community, the collected will of the people, is sovereign."* We shall then see, that this doctrine is utterly without foundation in history, and without support from reason. On the contrary, it will then be rendered manifest, that the people of America have never existed as one nation, clothed with sovereign authority; an idea which has no foundation in fact, and which has grown out of the popular use of language and the passions of politicians. But, at present, I merely wish to point out a few of the absurdities flowing from this doctrine, that the Constitution was ordained by "the aggregate community, the collected will of the people" of America, acting as one sovereign political society. This argument alone, this reductio ad absurdum, is amply sufficient, unless I am greatly mistaken, to shatter that already shattered hypothesis.

Mr. Justice Story, quoting the Declaration of Independence, says: "It is the right of the people, (plainly intending the majority of the people,) to alter, or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms, *Works, Vol. vi., page 222.

as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Now this is what is meant by the sovereignty of the people in America. But will any one contend, that the people of the United States, that is, a majority of them, may alter, or amend, the government of the Union? If they are, indeed, one people in the political sense of the word, then are they sovereign; and if as such they made the Constitution of the United States, then, according to all our American ideas and doctrines, they have the right to alter or amend that Constitution at their pleasure. Nay, more; they have the right to pull down the existing government, and to set up a new one in its place. But who will accept such a consequence? This right of sovereignty, if it exist, or if the one people exist to whom it naturally belongs, it is, according to the universally received doctrine of this continent, inherent and inalienable. No laws or constitutions can take it away, or abridge and limit its exercise. Who will say, then, that the people of the United States, "plainly meaning the majority of them," have such a right or authority? No one. Plainly and inevitably as this consequence flows from the fundamental position of Story and Webster, that the sovereign people of America ordained the Constitution, it will be avowed by no one, who has any reputation to lose, and who has the least respect for the reputation he possesses. Mr. Lincoln has avowed this consequence. But in this instance, as in many others, his logic has taken advantage of his want of information.

This consequence flows so naturally and so necessarily from the premises, that Mr. Justice Story has, in one place, inadvertently drawn it; or rather it has incidentally drawn itself. "The people of the United States," says he, "have a right to abolish, or alter the Constitution of the United States."+ True, if they made it; but they did not make it, and therefore they have the right neither * Vol. i., Book iii., chap. iii. † Vol. i., Book iii., chap. iii.

to alter nor to abolish it. The power that made, is the power to unmake. Mr. Justice Story did not mean, that is, he did not deliberately mean, that the people of the United States, or the majority of them, could alter or abolish the Constitution; for he was too well informed to be capable of such a blunder. But in this instance, as in many others, his logic, speaking the language of nature and of truth, got the better of his artificial and false hypothesis.

If the people of the United States are, in reality, one sovereign political community, and as such, ordained the Constitution, then they have the most absolute control over all the parts; and the States bear the same relation to this one grand and overshadowing sovereignty, that counties sustain to a State. They may be divided, or moulded, or abolished, at the pleasure of the whole people. But everybody knows better than this. Mr. Lincoln did, it is true, endorse this conclusion, in the first speech he ever made to the American public. When the long silence was broken, and, as President elect, he addressed his first word to an anxious country, he likened the relation between the States and the Union to that of countries to a State. Until then, there were many intelligent and wellinformed persons, who did not believe, that there was one individual in the United States capable of taking such a view of the Constitution, except among political preachers or parsons. But however absurd, it is only the necessary consequence of the premises laid down by Mr. Justice Story and Mr. Webster. It will, however, be regarded by every student of the Constitution in the light of a reductio ad absurdum, which, instead of establishing the conclusion to which it leads, only shatters and demolishes the position from which it flows.

*

*Indeed, this doctrine, and the very illustration of it, was borrowed by Mr. Lincoln from the celebrated Preacher of Princeton, N. J. Compare Mr. Lincoln's speech with Dr. Hodge on "the State of the Country."

CHAPTER XV.

The hypothesis that the people of America form one Nation.

WE have seen, in the preceding chapter, some of the absurdities flowing from the assumption, that the people of America form one nation, or constitute one political community. But as this is the яçoτor яoɛνdos, the first and all-comprehending falsehood, of the Northern theory of the Constitution, by which its history has been so sadly blurred, if not obliterated, and by which its most solemn provisions have been repealed, so we shall go beyond the foregoing reductio ad absurdum, and show that it has no foundation whatever in the facts of history. I was about to say, that it has not the shadow of such a foundation; but, in reality, it has precisely such a shadow in the vague popular use of language, to which the passions of interested partisans have given the appearance of substance. And it is out of this substance, thus created from a shadow, that have been manufactured those tremendous rights of national power, by which the clearly-reserved rights of the States have been crushed, and the most unjust war of the modern world justified. I purpose, therefore, to pursue this προτον πσευδοζ, this monstrous abortion of night and darkness, into the secret recesses of its history, and leave neither its substance nor its shadow in existence. Fortunately, in the prosecution of this design, it is only necessary to cross-examine those willing witnesses by whom this fiction has been created, and compare their testimony with itself, in order to show that they are utterly unwor

thy of credit as historians of the American Union. I shall begin with Mr. Justice Story.

The attempt of Mr. Justice Story to show, that the people of America formed one nation or State.

This celebrated commentator strains all the powers of language, and avails himself of every possible appearance, to make the colonies of America "one peeple," even before they severed their dependence on the British. crown. Thus, he says: "The colonies were fellowsubjects, and for many purposes one people. Every colonist had a right to inhabit, if he pleased, in any other colony; and as a British subject, he was capable of inheriting lands by descent in every other colony. The commercial intercourse of the colonies, too, was regulated by the laws of the British empire; and could not be restrained, or obstructed, by colonial legislation. The remarks of Mr. Chief Justice Jay on this subject are equally just and striking: 'All the people of this country were then subjects of the king of Great Britain, and owed allegiance to him; and all the civil authority then existing, or exercised here, flowed from the head of the British empire. They were, in a strict sense, fellow-subjects, and in a variety of respects, one people.'”*

Now all this signifies just exactly nothing as to the purpose which the author has in view. For, no matter in what respects the colonies were "one people," if they were not one in the political sense of the words; or if they had no political power as one people, then the germ of the national oneness did not exist among them. But this is conceded by Mr. Justice Story himself. "The colonies," says he, "were independent of each other in respect to their domestic concerns."+ Each was independent of the legislation of another, and of all the others combined, if they had pleased to combine.

*Story on the Constitution, vol. i, page 164.

† Ibid.