Footnote 40:[ (return) ]
Elliott's "Debates" (Washington edition, 1836), vol. iii, pp. 114, 115.
Footnote 41:[ (return) ]
Journal of the Federal Convention, May 29, 1787, 1 Elliott's "Debates."
Footnote 42:[ (return) ]
For a very striking illustration, see Deuteronomy vii, 6, 7.
CHAPTER VI.
The Preamble to the Constitution—subject continued.—Growth of the Federal Government and Accretions of Power.—Revival of Old Errors.—Mistakes and Misstatements.—Webster, Story, and Everett.—Who "ordained and established" the Constitution?
In the progressive growth of the Government of the United States in power, splendor, patronage, and consideration abroad, men have been led to exalt the place of the Government above that of the States which created it. Those who would understand the true principles of the Constitution can not afford to lose sight of the essential plurality of idea invariably implied in the term "United States," wherever it is used in that instrument. No such unit as the United States is ever mentioned therein. We read that "no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States, and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of Congress, accept," etc.[43] "The President ... shall not receive, within that period, any other emolument from the United States, or any of them."[44] "The laws of the United States, and treaties made or which shall be made under their authority," etc.[45] "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies."[46] The Federal character of the Union is expressed by this very phraseology, which recognizes the distinct integrity of its members, not as fractional parts of one great unit, but as component units of an association. So clear was this to contemporaries, that it needed only to be pointed out to satisfy their scruples. We have seen how effectual was the answer of Mr. Madison to the objections raised by Patrick Henry. Mr. Tench Coxe, of Pennsylvania, one of the ablest political writers of his generation, in answering a similar objection, said: "If the Federal Convention had meant to exclude the idea of 'union'—that is, of several and separate sovereignties joining in a confederacy—they would have said, 'We, the people of America'; for union necessarily involves the idea of competent States, which complete consolidation excludes."[47]
More than forty years afterward, when the gradual accretions to the power, prestige, and influence of the central Government had grown to such extent as to begin to hide from view the purposes for which it was founded, those very objections, which in the beginning had been answered, abandoned, and thrown aside, were brought to light again, and presented to the country as expositions of the true meaning of the Constitution. Mr. Webster, one of the first to revive some of those early misconceptions so long ago refuted as to be almost forgotten, and to breathe into them such renewed vitality as his commanding genius could impart, in the course of his well-known debate in the Senate with Mr. Hayne, in 1830, said:
"It can not be shown that the Constitution is a compact between State governments. The Constitution itself, in its very front, refutes that proposition: it declares that it is ordained and established by the people of the United States. So far from saying that it is established by the governments of the several States, it does not even say that it is established by the people of the several States; but it pronounces that it is established by the people of the United States in the aggregate."[48]
Judge Story about the same time began to advance the same theory, but more guardedly and with less rashness of statement. It was not until thirty years after that it attained its full development in the annunciations of sectionists rather than statesmen. Two such may suffice as specimens: