Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/172

as that which derived it from a majority of the people — and, at another, that the election of the President by the House of Representatives would be a federal act — although the House, itself, is national, because it derived its authority from the American people. And now we are told, that the amending power is partly national, because three-fourths of the States, voting as States, without regard to population, can, instead of the whole, amend the constitution; although the vote of a majority of the House of Representatives, taken by States, made the election of the President, to that extent, federal. If we turn from this confusion of ideas, to its own clear conceptions of what makes a federal, and what a national government, nothing is more evident than that the amending power is not derived from, nor exercised under the authority of the people of the Union, regarded in the aggregate — but from the several States, in their original, distinct and sovereign character; and that it is but a modification of the original creating power, by which the constitution was ordained and established — and which required the consent of each State to make it a party to it — and not a negation or inhibition of that power — as has been shown. In support of these views, it endeavors to show, by reasons equally unsatisfactory and inconclusive, that the object of the convention which framed the constitution was, to establish, "a firm national government." To ascertain the powers and objects of the convention, reference ought to be made, one would suppose, to the commissions given to their respective delegates, by the several States, which