either to grant or to reserve, may have arisen from an erroneous construction of the word "or." If the remark just made is correct, consistency decides its true meaning. "Are reserved to the states respectively or to the people." This word is used either to couple synonymes, or to denote opposition. The words "states and people" had the same, and also a different meaning: The same, as an associated people constituted a state; and a different meaning, from the right of self-government attached to mankind. But another construction seems to me to be the true one. “Or” is used merely to conjoin two words considered as completely synonymous; and the latter is introduced as an expletive of the former, lest it should be interpreted to mean 66 governments." The word "states" had been so often used in the constitution, that it was necessary to fix its meaning; and this amendment was intended to remove the suspicion of a tendency in the constitution towards consolidation, with which it had been charged previously to its adoption; by defining "states and people" as words synonymously used, effectually to defeat the pretence, that the term "people" meant the people of all the states, instead of the people, "respectively” of each state. A construction which supposes that all the inhabitants of all the states, and not the people of each state, were meant, would produce consequences which never could have been contemplated. The reservation would have been in favour of two incongruous objects, and therefore both could not reap its benefits. Being in the disjunctive, it might have been fulfilled by acknowledging the right of either, although the other should get nothing. By selecting the inhabitants of all the states in one mass, as the assignee of the reserved powers, the government of the union might extend their own powers; since there could be no loss, in conceding powers to those who could neither receive, exercise, nor preserve them.

In one other view, highly gratifying, these two amendments correspond with the construction I contend for. Several previous amendments had stipulated for personal or individual rights, as the government of the union was invested with a limited power of acting upon persons; these stipulate for political conventional rights. But different modes are pursued. By the first, certain specified aggressions are forbidden; by the second, all the rights and powers not delegated are reserved. The

first mode is imperfect, as the specified aggressions may be avoided, and yet oppression might be practised in other forms. By the second, specification is transferred to the government of the union; and the states, instead of being the grantees of limited rights, which might have been an acknowledgment of subordination, are the grantors of limited powers; and retain a supremacy which might otherwise have been tacitly conceded, as has been often done by the acceptance of franchises from monarchs or other sovereigns. Thus the powers reserved are only exposed to specified deductions, whilst those delegated are limited, with an injunction that the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage those retained though not specified, by not having been parted with. The states, instead of receiving, bestowed powers; and in confirmation of their authority, reserved every right they had not conceded, whether it is particularly enumerated, or tacitly retained. Among the former, are certain modes by which they can amend the constitution; among the latter, is the original right by which they created it.

When we have discovered who made a treaty, we have also discovered where the right of construction resides. Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Pinkney, Mr. Marshall, and Mr. Gerry, in their negotiations with revolutionary France, have furnished us with an admirable treatise, both to fix the residence of the right, and to display the wantonness of construction, assumed without right. Presidents Washington and Adams, all the successive members of the cabinet and congress itself, concurred in the principles advanced by these gentlemen. They prove, that an exclusive right of construction in one party, is a degradation of the other to a state of inferiority and dependance. Their arguments might be applied with great force in many views to our subject. If the states made the union, they demonstrate, that the same consent, necessary to create, is necessary to construe. Whereever the creating consent resided, there we are directed to look for the construing consent. It would be a much grosser violation of their principles, for no party to a treaty to usurp an exclusive right of construing it, than for one party to do so. As neither the executive, legislative nor judicial departments of the state or federal governments have ever consented to the union, no one of these departments can have an exclusive right of construing

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it. But if they did consent, and by that consent are parties, still the right is mutual. And if they are all to be considered as the co-ordinate departments or creatures of the people of the United States," they derive a mutual right of construction, from the mutual right possessed by the states which they represent. Suppose our legislative and judicial departments had fixed their own rights by a treaty between themselves, in the words of the general or state constitutions; would not each have possessed an unsubservient right of construction? If this right would be mutual in the case supposed, what hinders it from being also mutual, if these departments are created by an authority superior to both, and invested with distinct and limited agencies. Each trustee is subject to the supervision of his employer, and neither liable to a usurpation of another, any more than several co-ordinate ambassadors, would be to a claim of one to prescribe the duties of the rest, and regulate their consciences. It is easiest for an exclusive power of construction, where the limits of respective territories are hardest to define, to make conquests which will destroy balances, and break down restrictions; and therefore its interdiction in such cases is more necessary, than in others.

I conclude this section with a quotation from the Federalist. “The assent and ratification of the people, not as individuals "composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct " and independent states to which they belong, are the sources "of the constitution. It is therefore not a national, but a fede"ral compact."(a)

(a) Fed. 206. M. The quotations from the Federalist are taken from the edition of 1817, which designates the writer of each essay; and I have added the letters M. or H. to inform the reader which are cited from Mr. Madison, and which from Mr. Hamilton.

SECTION 5.

DIVISION AND LIMITATION OF POWER.

In this and the following section, I shall endeavour to establish principles vitally important to our system of government, and however the subject may be handled, particularly worthy of the publick consideration.

Human societies were originally constituted with a view to the interest of one or a few, and governments were consequently founded in the simple principle of subordination. They were splendid statues, the people were pedestals, and a succession of convulsions, occasioned by a gas too sublimated or too heavy, constantly overturned, only to set them up again. Monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy succeeded each other; but all being founded in the principle of subordination to unlimited power, it ran like the blood of the Stuarts through the whole family, and made each individual a scourge to mankind. As knowledge advanced, philosophers sought for alleviations of a condition so unhappy; and having only seen those three forms of government, called them natural principles, and expected a remedy for the defects of each, from a mixture of all. It was seen and admitted, that the formation of a government, after the model of an army, by a series of subordination from a king to a constable, from a general to a corporal, made tyrants and slaves; and checks and balances were contrived to prevent both consequences, by poizing the three supposed natural principles against each other, fraught with co-ordinate, distinct and independent powers. Thus the principle of a necessary series of subordination was exploded; but as the discovery was new, and as the dogma "that monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy comprised all the ingredients of government" was still believed; it was imperfectly cultivated. Hence absolute sovereignty continued to be assigned to mixed governments, and absolute subordination to the people. This first effort of political improvement

was however recommended by a considerable portion of practical success. The checks, collisions and balances, though imperfectly contrived, produced effects, which exalted and invigorated several nations, above those which had neglected similar political modifications. But still the error of retaining absolute power in the government, and inflicting absolute submission on the people, caused no small degree of oppression, which excited mankind to search for a better remedy. Locke and others at length discovered, that sovereignty in governments and passive obedience in nations, far from being natural or necessary principles for civil societies, were arbitrary and pernicious notions, capable of being supplanted by opinions more natural; and that civil government, constructed upon different principles, and subjected to responsibility and control, might be made more productive of national happiness. But the natural right of self-government, and the consequent rights of dividing and limiting power, might have slept forever in theory, except for the American revolution; which seems to have been designed by Providence for the great purpose of demonstrating its practicability and effects. We seem to have been propelled by necessity and commanded by fate, to stride beyond the principles of absolute sovereignty in a government, and absolute subordination in the people; and beyond the ineffectual project of mixing monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy together; quite up to the sound political doctrines of limitation, restriction, and division of power. Far from allowing sovereignty to governments, or confiding our rights to a balance between arbitrary and artificial political principles, we were obliged to feel and to act upon the genuine and natural principle of self-government; to extract from it the obvious truths" that sovereignty resided in the people, and that magistrates were consequently their trustees," and to vindicate these rights by creating co-ordinate and collateral political departments invested with limited powers; instead of that absolute power, so highly pernicious in the hands of any one of the three ancient principles, and so far from being made harmless by their mixture. Thus we constituted a wide difference between our policy and that of the English; in its origin; in expelling from it two of their principles entirely; in rejecting the balances for the better security of co-ordinate departments; and in with-holding from these departments, either