pealed to, for authority and sanction to that instrument. Even if they could have made it their constitution, by adopting it, they could not, being as they were separate and distinct political communities, have united themselves into one mass for that purpose, without previously overthrowing their own municipal governments; and, even then, the new constitution would have been obligatory only on those who agreed to and adopted it, and not on the rest.
The distinction between the people of the several States and the people of the United States, as it is to be understood in reference to the present subject, is perfectly plain. I have already explained the terms "a people," when used in a political sense. The distinction of which I speak may be illustrated by a single example. If the Constitution had been made by "the people of the United States," a certain portion of those people would have had authority to adopt it. In the absence of all express provision to the contrary, we may concede that a majority would, prima facie, have had that right. Did that majority, in fact, adopt it? Was it ever ascertained whether a majority of the whole people were in favor of it or not? Was there any provision, either of law or constitution, by which it was possible to ascertain that fact? It is perfectly well known that there was no such provision; that no such majority was ever ascertained, or even contemplated. Let us suppose that the people of the States of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, containing, as we have seen they probably did, a majority of the whole people, had been unanimous against the Constitution, and that a bare majority of the people in each of the other nine States, acting in their separate character as States, had adopted and ratified it. There can be no doubt, that it would have become the constitution of the United States; and that, too, by the suffrages of a decided minority, probably not exceeding one-fourth of the aggregate people of all the States. This single example shows, conclusively, that the people of the United States, as contradistinguished from the people of the several States, had nothing to do, and could not have had any thing to do with the matter.
This brief history of the formation and adoption of the Constitution, which is familiar to the mind of every one who has
