becomes improper, and thus fails of the qualification required by the dictations of the Constitution for all legitimate, auxiliary laws. On the same principle, all laws whose ten. dency, or result, is to inflict injury on the predominant interests of any one, or more, of the united parties,—to stir up animosity or contention among them,—or in any wise, to disturb the common harmony, or frustrate the general welfare,--fall under the same prohibitory exclusion as improper laws. Hence, the tariff laws, setting aside their unconstitutionality in other respects, lie under the stamp of constitutional condemnation.

But, has the Constitution debarred Congress of all discretion? Has it made that organ a mere machine, arranged and wound up, to go through a certain routine of legislation, without choice, thought, or thrift? No, certainly not on the contrary, the Federal Charter has constituted her a moral and political agent of high responsibilities, high endowments, high trusts, and ample powers,-the leading member, perhaps, in the whole political apparatus. It gives her free choice, unfettered discretion among means of diverse, and even doubtful expediency and propriety; but among those of doubtful legality, none whatever.

The Constitution of the United States, is the exposition of the will of the people of the several States, acting as the constituent parties of the Federal Union, as to what they have decreed to be:-1st. The organization of the government: 2d. Its sphere of action: 3d. Its mode of action: 4th. The objects and ends of that action. It is not in itself a compact, but the result of a compact. This the advocates of consolidation, with Mr. Webster at their head, admit; and yet they maintain, as a fundamental principle, and it is the foundation stone of all ultra as well as citra consolidationism,—that it is the work of the people, acting as one homogeneous mass,-one concentrated nation. Now a compact imp ies a concurrence of a pluarlity of principals. If the American people acted as one nation in forming the Constitution, then it could have formed but one of the parties to the compact: who, then, was the other party or parties? Such is the reductio ad absurdum to which all political reasoning must come, which contravenes the doctrine, that, in forming the Constitution, the people acted in any other way than as segregate masses, as separate, sovereign States.

The people of the United States, then,—that is, the elementary sovereign bodies of the several States forming the Union, known under the title of the United States, compacted, or agreed, with one another, not under expressed, but under implied, stipulations of good faith, to form a government. That moral act of agreement, was the compact. The Constitution was the result and explanation of it. And the ratification, adoption, or creation of the Constitution, by the several States, was their registration and attestation of their accession to it.

Compacts are binding, so long as the conditions on which they rest are mutually observed; so long as the objects for which they were formed are attained. What are the objects of the Federal compact?

1st. To form a more perfect union; that is, a less faulty one than the old Confederation.

2d. To establish justice.

3d. To insure domestic tranquillity. (Quere,—if Mr. Adams and the abolitionists ever notice this.)

4th. To provide for the common defence.

5th. To promote the general welfare.

6th. To secure the blessings of liberty to the contracting parties, and to their posterity.

These were the conditions of the compact. How they were to be carried out and accomplished, is elucidated and explained in the Constitution. The Constitution is, conse. quently, a system, or code of rules, stipulations and mandates, for the fulfilment of the objects of the compact; and the Government is the agent, which it creates and empowers to act, under that code of rules, stipulations and mandates, in furtherance of the objects of the compact.

The States, then, formed a compact, of which the Constitution, and the General Government, are the results. When a State has acceded to the compact, whether it can thereafter withdraw from it, is, at present, an irrelevant point, but will be considered hereafter. The Constitution of the United States, then, is not a compact of the States; but a form, or basis of government, established by, through, and in consequence of, a compact, entered into between separate, sovereign States, in that elementary, political condition, which precedes governmental organization, armed in the VOL. I. NO. 1. 26

entire panoply of underived and unalienated sovereignty,each State acting by itself, and for itself, and adopting, or, which is the same thing, creating, the Constitution, as its own sovereign act :—with a mutual understanding with the other States, that they are doing the same:-and, that the Constitution, when they shall have resolved themselves into their citizen characters, would act equally and alike upon all, and should possess the coëqual, cotemporaneous, and concurrent allegiance, obedience, and support of all.

The old Confederation, was a confederacy of the State governments. It proved incompetent to fulfil the objects for which it was formed; it was, in fact, little more than an advisory and recommendatory council. A conviction of its incompetency being forced on the public mind, several States passed resolutions, of which the purport was, that it was expedient to revise and amend the articles of confederation, so as the better to correlate and adjust its principles with the exigencies of the Confederacy. Whereupon, the old Congress, by a resolution, recommended to the several State governments, to appoint delegates, to assemble in Philadelphia, for the purpose of revising the articles of confederation. Accordingly, all the States, except Rhode Island, sent delegates to this convention, of whose labors, the present Constitution was to result. The draft of the Constitution, when finally matured, was sent to Congress; by Congress, it was transmitted to the several State Governments; by the latter, it was submitted to the people of the several States, assembled in Convention; and, by them, was adopted. This is a succinct epitome of the history of the formation of the Federal Constitution. On it, we remark:

1st. The object in calling the Convention at Philadelphia was, to amend the articles of the Old Confederation, and, of course, to continue that Confederation; that Confederation was constituted out of the State Governments; the State Governments were the federated parties.

2d. Had the State Governments acted finally on the new Constitution, that is, had they not referred the Constitution to the people, but ratified it themselves, it would have been nothing more than the old Confederation, in an amended form. But, viewing the matter, as they properly did, as one involving the exercise of elementary power, that the new Constitution, purporting to act directly on the people, and

conveying grants of sovereign prerogatives, was de facto a new government; and that, they possessed no competency, de lege or de jure, to create a government, they laid it before the only power which possessed this competency.

3d. The whole aspect of the case, therefore, became changed, so soon as the people, in their sovereign capacity, took it up. All the preceding circumstances, became merged in the fact of the action of the elementary power. This action, called ratification, or adoption, was creation. That the State Legislatures appointed the delegates to the Convention, that this Convention discussed and drew up the Constitution and reported it to Congress,-that Congress in its turn, reported it to the several State Legislatures,—are all minor, subsidiary, collateral facts: the grand fact was, that the sovereign powers,-the people of the several States, assembled in Convention,-acted; their action, we repeat, was creation.

The Constitution divides the government into Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Departments; and the whole forms a system of well-balanced powers, admirably arranged. The Executive Department superintends and directs the administration of the laws; and carries a check on the legislative power. The Legislative Department enacts all the laws; and is divided into two branches, which check each other, and one of them checks the Executive Department. The Judicial Department expounds, applies, and upholds the laws, in all disputed cases, and in all infractions of law and justice; and checks the other departments: hence, it is the regulator, which controls the movements of the acting and impelling forces. If the Legislature shall pass laws, not warranted by the Constitution, or otherwise not expedient or proper, the President has the power to annul them by his Veto: this Veto, however, fails, if the laws be repassed by a majority of two-thirds. If laws not warranted by the Constitution be enacted, whether with or without the concurrence of the Executive, the Judicial Department has the power to annul them, whenever they are brought in proper form before it; and this annulment is final, without appeal.

The Constitution contemplates no interregnum in any of the departments. Hence, the Vice President is elected to ac as President, in case of the absence, or temporary disqualification, or disability, of the President; and to become the

President, in the event of a permanent vacation by the President.

Each department is the representative, the empowered deputy and agent, within its own sphere, of the sovereign parties who united to set up the Government. The Government does not, in any of its parts, represent the citizens: the citizens, as such, have no concern or share in the action of the Government. The Government was established by the People, in their sovereignty, to superintend and promote the interests belonging to them in their artificial, or secondary character of citizens; and, at the ballot-box, and the periods of election in general, citizens are but the deputies and representatives of themselves, in their primitive sovereignty, to effect the changes and renovations,-to keep up the perennial frondescence,-which they have established to take place, at stated epochs in the political organization.

The Senate represents the States in their sovereignty; the House of Representatives represents the States according to their numerical masses. Hence, as the States, in respect to sovereignty, are compeers, their representatives, in the Senate, are severally equal; while, in the House of Representatives, the representations are in ratiös commensurate with their respective populations. Hence, the prevailing opinion, that the Senate of the United States represents the State governments, or the State legislatures, is gratuitous and erroneous. This opinion seems to be founded on the fact, that the State legislatures have the appointment of members to the United States Senate. The fact is so, they have this appointment; but it is a duty, and not a right,— a duty purely functional, imposed on them by a decree of the sovereign power. Hence, in performing this duty, they only act as electoral colleges, to effect the senatorial renovations. Hence, also, the common practice, of State legislatures instructing the members of the Senate, as to a course of action, on given measures, rests on a misconception, and cannot be sustained. The Government, nor any of its departments, represents nothing and nobody, but the primitive, sovereign democracies, in that state in which they exist prior to the formation of government. The Senate, then, is not the representative of the State legislature, nor of the citizens, but of the sovereignty; and its final cause, and purport, are, to serve as a check, to the money-power, on the one hand, and to the sword-power, on the other.