JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF CHICAGO, AND PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL Populus non omnis hominum coetus quoque modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis juris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus. - CICERO, de Repub. They that go about by disobedience to do no more than reforme the commonwealth shall find that they do thereby destroy it. - HOBBES, Leviathan. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 1867. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by JOHN A. JAMESON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY } '53.508891 Leading principles of the American system of government. legislation, how distributed abroad, and how in America. §1. Enacts the fundamental law. Various species of Conventions described and distinguished. §§ 4-16. I. THE SPONTANEOUS CONVENTION, or PUBLIC MEETING. §§ 4, 5. Examples of, in early American history. §§ 9, 10. IV. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. § 11. Where the Constitutional Convention exercises the powers of a Revolutionary Convention, or vice versa, how to be classed. § 12. History of the origin and development of the Constitutional Con- vention in the United States. §§ 13, 14. Misconceptions respecting the origin, constitution, and powers of the Constitutional Convention. §§ 15, 16. Fundamental conceptions to be first developed sovereignty, or a Direct manifestations through public opinion, and through the irregular exhibition of power. § 23. Indirect manifestations of sovereignty, through governmental agencies, as, the electors, the legislative, executive, and judicial departments, and the Constitutional Convention. § 24. Relative rank of these five systems of agencies. § 24. The doctrine of constitutional presumptions stated. § 25. The locus of sovereignty, as a question of fact: I. In foreign states. § 26. II. In the United States of America. §§ 27-53. (a). The question considered from the point of view of the elementary The definition of sovereignty considered and applied. § 27. (b). The question considered from the point of view of historical What it is to be a nation. §30. What it is not to be a nation. § 31. In the light of these definitions, that the United States constitute a nation, inferred 1. From the fact, that, in their development there is observable a perfect conformity to the method of Nature in the genesis of nations. §§ 32-35. The method of Nature exemplified. §§ 33, 34. Capital steps in the progress of the United States, specified. §§ 34, 35. 2. From the mode of ratification of the Federal Consti tution. §§ 36-38. View of the "States Rights School." § 37. Observations on the mode of ratification adopted. § 38. 3. From the expressed opinions of contemporary statesmen, friends as well as enemies of the Constitution. §§ 39-41. 4. From the arguments employed to defeat the Federal Constitution in the Conventions called to ratify it. §§ 43-45. 5. From judicial decisions and the opinions of statesmen, Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, per Opinions of Washington, Dr. Ramsay, C. C. Pinckney, and Charles Pinckney. §47. Opinions of Mr. Grimke, Chancellor Kent, John Quincy |