"
It is scarcely necessary to remind the well-informed reader that the
terms, "Constitution of the Federal Government," employed above, and
"Federal Constitution," as used in other proceedings of that period, do
not mean the instrument to which we now apply them; and which was not
then in existence. They were applied to the system of government
formulated in the Articles of Confederation. This is in strict accord
with the definition of the word constitution, given by an eminent
lexicographer:[29] "The body of fundamental laws, as contained in
written documents or prescriptive usage, which constitute the form of
government for a nation, state, community, association, or society."[30]
Thus we speak of the British Constitution, which is an unwritten system
of "prescriptive usage"; of the Constitution of Massachusetts or of
Mississippi, which is the fundamental or organic law of a particular
State embodied in a written instrument; and of the Federal Constitution
of the United States, which is the fundamental law of an association of
States, at first as embraced in the Articles of Confederation, and
afterward as revised, amended, enlarged, and embodied in the instrument
framed in 1787, and subsequently adopted by the various States. The
manner in which this revision was effected was as follows. Acting on the
suggestion of the Annapolis Convention, the Congress, on the 21st of the
ensuing February (1787), adopted the following resolution:
"_Resolved_, That, in the opinion of Congress, it is expedient
that, on the second Monday in May next, a convention of
delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States,
be held at Philadelphia, for the sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to
Congress and the several Legislatures, such alterations and
provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and
confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution
adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of
the Union.
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