The reason is that,
in the Constitution, it is the people who speak and not the
States. The people ordain the Constitution, and therein address
themselves to the States and to the Legislatures of the States
in the language of injunction and prohibition."[78]
It is surprising that such inconsistent ideas should proceed from a
source so eminent. Its author falls into the very error which he had
just before so distinctly pointed out, in confounding the people of the
States with their governments. In the vehemence of his hostility to
State sovereignty, he seems--as all of his disciples seem--unable even
to comprehend that it means the sovereignty, not of State governments,
but of people who make them. With minds preoccupied by the unreal idea
of one great people of a consolidated nation, these gentlemen are
blinded to the plain and primary truth that the only way in which the
people ordained the Constitution was as the people of States. When Mr.
Webster says that "in the Constitution it is the people who speak, and
not the States," he says what is untenable. The States _are_ the people.
The people do not speak, never have spoken, and never can speak, in
their sovereign capacity (without a subversion of our whole system),
otherwise than as the people of States.
There are but two modes of expressing their sovereign will known to the
people of this country. One is by direct vote--the mode adopted by Rhode
Island in 1788, when she rejected the Constitution.
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