recommended on the 17th day of September, 1787, by the federal convention, for the government of the united states, hereby announcing to all those whom it may concern, that the said constitution is binding upon the said people, according to an authentic copy hereto annexed. Done in convention this 26th day of June, 1788."

"The said constitution" then, and by that act, became "binding upon the said people" of Virginia. She then, by her own peculiar and exclusive will, gave that constitution of government all the life and jurisdiction it ever had or could have in Virginia. Nothing could be plainer. Now, is it not incredible that the statesmen, judges, and historians, of the Massachusetts school, should ignore or suppress the sovereign act of Virginia (and the similar one of Massachusetts), and assert that the nation made the constitution, and that it was not made by the people of the several states? They also ignore or suppress the all-important fact, that the thirteen states were, at that moment, under a solemn compact- all with each and each with all that "each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence," and hence that they did not and could not act otherwise than as sovereigns, and that no aggregate people did or could exist, with authority to put a general constitution in force in and over one of these states. If thirteen sovereign states did, a sovereign nation did not, then exist. If the former did then dispense power, the latter did not.

-

Making Assurance doubly sure. - Furthermore, Virginia, in her absolutely sovereign action by convention, aiming to guard against those dangers to her integrity, which Massachusetts had been so careful to forefend, and which she herself was so earnestly premonished of, seconded the demand of Massachusetts on the states for amendments, as New Hampshire simultaneously did, — the main one being "that each state shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not, by this constitution, delegated to the united states." This, somewhat modified in language, though not in import, was afterwards adopted by the states. Again, the convention, speaking with direct reference to federal functionaries, declared "that all power is invested in, and derived from, the people; and that magistrates are, therefore, their trustees and agents, at all times amenable to them." And, finally, she embodied in the ordinance of ratification, still speaking for herself, the following declaration: "That the powers granted under the constitution, being derived from the people of the united states [may] be resumed by them, whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." [I. Ell. Deb. 327.]

Her ideas were, in short, that all power is in the people; the people are states; each state retains all she does not delegate; all mag

istrates are their trustees and agents; and the people that delegate powers may withdraw them. These truths are fundamental and sacred; they are in all bills of rights; they are state sovereignty, and only mendacity itself can unblushingly deny them!

The last above quoted passage, Judge Story, in his "Commentaries," uses as a leading proof that these "powers are "derived from the people" as a nation, when, as he knew, every word and action of Virginia contradicts it; and the passage itself is susceptible of no such interpretation, the assertion being, as the fact is, that the "powers" are "derived from the people of the . . . states." All the states including Oregon, Maine, Texas, Alaska, Greenland, and Patagonia"resuming" or "reassuming," as New York has it"the powers" delegated by Virginia, is a solecism, which would be amusing were it not a subject of deep regret.

Such perversions are hardly entitled to respectful exposure; but let us plod patiently on. Look at the ludicrous position and silly act these Massachusetts philosophers attribute to Virginia, as well as to their own state. In this trying and solemn hour, when high debate was raging, and all hearts were fervently wishing to secure her "pearl of great price," sovereignty, and the freedom of her children, and her children's children, against consolidation and arbitrary power, Virginia, by her great statesmen and lawyers "and there were giants in those days" forgot herself, and her simultaneous sovereign act, and declared that the nation gave, and could take away, the powers granted. While denying and guarding against it, she confessed an outside sovereignty that destroyed her. While engaged in preserving her political life, she committed the most inconsistent and remarkable suicide in history!

Now let us conclude the case of Virginia, by contemplating for a moment the conduct of Massachusetts towards her, as it will appear in the pages of our Gibbon, — if she be sponsor for her misteaching sons, and fail to lead, in restoring the commonwealths to their old status and supremacy. Both foreboded the same dangers. They asserted, acted with, and secured their sovereignty in the same mode, - the latter leading the way. They pledged solemn faith for mutual protection, declaring and guaranteeing each other to be "sovereign, free, and independent."

Virginia kept the faith! She was incapable of doing otherwise. But Massachusetts, to promote selfish ends, became the Peter the Hermit of a new crusade. She perverted the faith and the solemn compacts of the fathers, inflamed the North to hunger and thirst for Southern carnage and blood, and finally led an overwhelming host to dragoon the South into submission, and to darken her sunny landscapes with

desolation and mourning. "The land was as the garden of Eden before her, and behind her, a desolate wilderness!" Yes; she issued forth from her own unassailed and unbroken walls, which shielded her own plenty and peace, and, like a demon of destruction, razed Virginia's citadel to the earth, and drove the ploughshare of ruin through all its foundations!

CHAPTER IX.

SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA FEDERALIZE THEMSELVES.

IN

N South Carolina, the new system was strongly opposed, and much discussed, while in Georgia, the accession was ready and unreluctant. Let us take first the case of

SOUTH CAROLINA.

The Eighth to Ratify - Vote, 149 to 73 — date, May 23, 1783. Not less decisively speaks the record of this state. All her sons were opposed to any interference with state sovereignty, — the enemies of the new system charging danger, and the friends declaring the fear to be groundless. Rawlins Lowndes was the leading opponent. So earnest was he, that, seeming to look forward to the lost liberties of his state, to justify his opposition and prove his words of warning true, he wished his epitaph to be: "Here lies the man that opposed the constitution, because it was ruinous to the liberty of America." Were he, Patrick Henry, Luther Martin, and the other opponents, wiser than the rest of the fathers? Did they really find the defects and dangers they charged? Or did they fear the alleged propensities of the Northern people, and the perversions of their expounding statesmen ?

The leading constitutionists were Charles Pinckney, General C. C. Pinckney, John Rutledge, Pierce Butler, Edward Rutledge, J. J. Pringle, and others. They encountered and overthrew the same kind of opposition, which, as we have seen, was rife in the other states. The discussion took place both in the legislature and the convention.

The Explanation of the System to her. - CHARLES PINCKNEY, a member of both federal and state conventions, and one of her most distinguished statesmen, said that "all power of right belongs to the people; that it flows immediately from them, and is delegated to their officers for the public good; that our rulers are the servants of the people, created for their use, and amenable to their will." [IV. Ell. Deb. 319.] A "distinguishing feature in our union," said he, "is its

division into individual states, differing in extent of territory, manners, population, and products." [Ibid. 323.]

He further said, the condition of inter-state and foreign commerce made necessary 66 some general and permanent system, which should at once embrace all interests, and, by placing the states on firm and united ground, enable them effectually to assert their [not the nation's] commercial rights." [Ibid. 254.] He said further, there is an authority "absolute and uncontrollable," "from which there is no appeal," "the sovereign or supreme power of the state;" and that "with us the sovereignty of the union is with the people" [Ibid. 327], meaning, with Madison, the people of the states whose creation the government was to be, and who were then delegating "powers" to the said creation. For example, he said "the states ought not to entrust important rights" to one legislative house, and that, therefore, the convention thought it "their duty to divide the legislature into two branches, and, by a limited revisionary power, to mingle in some degree the executive in their proceedings." [Ibid. 256.]

Furthermore, he cited approvingly the contention of the small states in the federal convention, "that as the states were the pillars upon which the general constitution must ever rest, their state governments must ever remain; that however they may vary in point of territory or population, as political associations they were equal." [Ibid. 256.]

And, finally, he characterized the new system as "a federal republic," and said: "To what limits such a republic might extend, or how far it is capable of uniting the liberty of a small commonwealth with the safety of a peaceful empire; or whether, among co-ordinate powers, dissensions and jealousies would not arise, which, for want of a common superior, might proceed to fatal extremities, are questions upon which he did not recollect the example of any nation to authorize us to decide, because the. experiment has never yet been fairly made. We are now about to make it upon an extensive scale, and under circumstances so promising that he considered it the fairest experiment that had ever been made in favor of human nature." [Ibid. 262.] It is beyond question, then, that Charles Pinckney considered the states

as

co-ordinate powers," having no common superior." No "nation of people," distributing their powers between their general government and their several state governments was known to him!

GENERAL C. C. PINCKNEY, a member of both conventions, afterwards in several high offices, and finally the federal party's candidate for the presidency, said, near the close of the federal convention, after the character of the new constitution had been agreed on, to wit, on September 3, 1787: "The first legislature will be composed of the