It was State ratification alone--the ratification
of the _people_ of each State, independently of all other people--that
gave force, vitality, and validity to the Constitution.
Judge Story, referring to the fact that the voters assembled in the
several States, asks where else they could have assembled--a pertinent
question on our theory, but the idea he evidently intended to convey was
that the voting of "the people" by States was a mere matter of
geographical necessity, or local convenience; just as the people of a
State vote by counties; the people of a county by towns, "beats," or
"precincts"; and the people of a city by wards. It is hardly necessary
to say that, in all organized republican communities, majorities govern.
When we speak of the will of the people of a community, we mean the will
of a majority, which, when constitutionally expressed, is binding on any
minority of the same community.
If, then, we can conceive, and admit for a moment, the possibility that,
when the Constitution was under consideration, the people of the United
States were politically "one people"--a collective unit--two deductions
are clearly inevitable: In the first place, each geographical division
of this great community would have been entitled to vote according to
its relative population; and, in the second, the expressed will of the
legal majority would have been binding upon the whole. A denial of the
first proposition would be a denial of common justice and equal rights;
a denial of the second would be to destroy all government and establish
mere anarchy.
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