Mr. Webster, one of the first to revive some of those
early misconceptions so long ago refuted as to be almost forgotten, and
to breathe into them such renewed vitality as his commanding genius
could impart, in the course of his well-known debate in the Senate with
Mr. Hayne, in 1830, said:
"It can not be shown that the Constitution is a compact between
State governments. The Constitution itself, in its very front,
refutes that proposition: it declares that it is ordained and
established by the people of the United States. So far from
saying that it is established by the governments of the several
States, it does not even say that it is established by the
people of the several States; but it pronounces that it is
established by the people of the United States in the
aggregate."[48]
Judge Story about the same time began to advance the same theory, but
more guardedly and with less rashness of statement. It was not until
thirty years after that it attained its full development in the
annunciations of sectionists rather than statesmen. Two such may suffice
as specimens:
Mr. Edward Everett, in his address delivered on the 4th of July, 1861,
and already referred to, says of the Constitution: "That instrument does
not purport to be a 'compact,' but a constitution of government. It
appears, in its first sentence, not to have been entered into by the
States, but to have been ordained and established by the people of the
United States for themselves and their 'posterity.
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