posal of an amendment that a special session of Congress be forbidden to deal with any subject except that for which it had been specially convoked.

To illustrate how closely the applicability of the Constitution has always been studied it may be mentioned that from April to November, 1921, there were offered in the first session of the Sixty-seventh Congress twentyfive resolutions to amend it, some of them being substantially repetitions of others. One was for making the term of the President six years and prohibiting his reëlection; another would authorize him to veto any provision of a bill and approve the remaining ones; another would empower Congress to regulate the employment of children under sixteen years of age (see Note 45); another would extend the word "elections" in the Constitution to include primaries (see Note 26); another would submit to a vote of the people the question of declaring war (Note 55); another would extend the constitutional definition of treason (Note 113) to include acts of injury in time of war to the military, physical, or financial resources of the United States; another would require the ratification of. an Amendment by the voters of the country to the exclusion of the legislatures of the States; and more of various kinds. It has been said that over 2000 amendments have been proposed in the course of our National life.

Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses [Notes 61 and 65] in the Ninth Section of the first Article; 130 and that no State, without its

130 This relates to slavery.

Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.131

131 Once more the small State is guaranteed against being prejudiced by the large ones. In the Brazilian Constitution it is provided that bills to abolish the republican federative form of government, or to destroy equality of representation in the Senate, are not subjects of deliberation.

ARTICLE VI

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution as under the Confederation.132

132 This was "a solemn assurance to public creditors and to the world that the public faith would be inviolably kept by the United States under its changed government."

Hamilton put the debt of the Union at $11,710,378 owing in foreign countries and $42,414,085 of domestic debt. The States themselves owed $25,000,000, making debts in the aggregate of $79,000,000.

The credit of the Colonies had sunk so low during the Revolution that had it not been for bankers in Holland and France the war for freedom must have failed. Thereafter the young States issued so much paper money and passed so many laws making it difficult for creditors to collect debts that it was considered necessary to give assurance to the world that the Nation would pay.

In like manner the Dominion of Canada assumed in its Constitution (1867) responsibility for existing debts.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof;* and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the su preme Law of the Land; 133

133 This means that the Constitution itself is a law which it is the duty of the courts (State as well as National) to

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uphold and enforce as they do all other laws. A law of Congress to be one of the supreme laws must be "made in pursuance thereof" and not in conflict with the Constitution. When not made in pursuance thereof it is of course unconstitutional and of no effect.

"If the State governments had not been restrained from encroaching on the powers vested in the National Government," wrote President Monroe, "the Constitution, like the Confederation, would soon have been set at naught; and it was not within the limit of the human mind to devise any plan for the accomplishment of the object other than by making a National Constitution which should be to the extent of its powers the supreme law of the land."

"Legislators have their authority measured by the Constitution," says Cooley; "they are chosen to do what it permits, and nothing more, and they take solemn oath to obey and support it. . To pass an act when they are in doubt whether it does not violate the Constitution is to treat as of no force the most imperative obligations any person can assume."

..

Before this supreme law the acts of Congress, the acts of State legislatures, and the constitutions of States, when conflicting with it, go down. When the people express their will in the National Constitution all conflicting expressions of will of an inferior sort go for nothing. An excellent illustration of the absolute supremacy of the Constitution was presented in the Eighteenth Amend ment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, because at the time of its adoption there were not only many States with laws permitting the manufacture and sale of liquors, but there were also acts of Congress, and, moreover, the National treasury derived large revenue from licenses and taxes respecting liquors. But all those fell and were nothing the instant that the Eighteenth Amendment, the supreme law, took effect. "The first section of the Amendment," said the Supreme

Court of the United States, disposing (June 7, 1920) in one decision of cases which arose in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Missouri, "the one embodying the prohibition, is operative throughout the entire territorial limits of the United States, binds all legislative bodies, courts, public officers, and individuals within those limits, and of its own force invalidates every legislative act - whether by Congress, by a State legislature, or by a Territorial assembly — which authorizes or sanctions what the section prohibits."

A good illustration of the statement in the Constitution that a treaty (along with the Constitution itself, and the acts of Congress made in the pursuance of it) is the supreme law of the land, before which National laws, State laws, and judicial decisions must fall, is found in the Migratory Bird Case, in which the Supreme Court held (1920) that, upon our making a treaty in 1916 with Great Britain for the protection of birds passing between the United States and Canada, the States ceased to have regulatory power. When the supervisory power was given to Congress by a treaty, the treaty and the act to carry it out became the supreme law of the land. Of the three elements entering into what the Constitution declares to be the "supreme law of the land", namely, "this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States", the treaty is second to no other. The laws of Congress are not the supreme law of the land unless they "shall be made in pursuance thereof" of the Constitution. But the treaty is the supreme law of the land when made "under the authority of the United States" — that is, when negotiated by the President and approved by the Senate. The people having expressed their National will in a treaty, the will of a State respecting the subject must conform to the superior will.