Benjamin Franklin advocated equality of suffrage in the Senate as a
means of securing "the _sovereignties_ of the individual States."[66]
James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, said sovereignty "is in the people before
they make a Constitution, and remains in them," and described the people
as being "thirteen independent sovereignties."[67] Gouverneur Morris,
who was, as well as Wilson, one of the warmest advocates in the
Convention of a strong central government, spoke of the Constitution as
"a _compact_," and of the parties to it as "each enjoying _sovereign_
power."[68] Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, declared that the Government
"was instituted by a number of _sovereign States_."[69] Oliver
Ellsworth, of the same State, spoke of the States as "sovereign
bodies."[70] These were all eminent members of the Convention which
formed the Constitution.
There was scarcely a statesman of that period who did not leave on
record expressions of the same sort. But why multiply citations? It is
very evident that the "men of those days" entertained very different
views of sovereignty from those set forth by the "new lights" of our
day. Far from considering it a term of feudal origin, "purely
inapplicable to the American system," they seem to have regarded it as a
very vital principle in that system, and of necessity belonging to the
several States--and I do not find a single instance in which they
applied it to any political organization, except the States.
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