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CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.
in their political capacity, a constitution, though originating in consent, becomes, when ratified, obligatory, as a fundamental ordinance or law.[1] The constitution of a confederated republic, that is, of a national republic formed of several states, is, or at least may be, not less an irrevocable form of government, than the constitution of a state formed and ratified by the aggregate of the several counties of the state.[2]
§ 353. If it had been the design of the framers of the constitution or of the people, who ratified it, to consider it a mere confederation, resting on treaty stipulations, it is difficult to conceive, that the appropriate terms should not have been found in it. The United States were no strangers to compacts of this nature.[3] They had subsisted to a limited extent before the revolution. The articles of confederation, though in some few respects national, were mainly of a pure federative character, and were treated as stipulations between states for many purposes independent and sovereign.[4] And yet (as has been already seen) it was deemed a political heresy to maintain, that under it any state had a right- ↑ 1 Wilson's Lectures, 417.
- ↑ See The Federalist, No. 9; Id. No. 15, 16; Id. No. 33; Id. No. 39.
- ↑ New-England Confederacy of 1643; 3 Kent. Coram. 190, 191, 192; Rawle on Const. Introduct. p. 24, 25.—In the ordinance of 1787, for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio, certain articles were expressly declared to be "articles of compact between the original states, [i.e. the United States,] and the people and states [states in futuro, for none were then in being] in the said territory." But to guard against any possible difficulty, it was declared, that these articles should "forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent." So, that though a compact neither party was at liberty to withdraw from it at its pleasure, or to absolve itself from its obligations. Why was not the constitution of the United states declared to be articles of compact if that was the intention of the framers?
- ↑ The Federalist, No. 15, 22, 39, 40, 43; Ogden v. Gibbons, 9 Wheaton's R. 1, 187.
