states, but to have been ordained and established by the people of the United States, for themselves and their posterity.' The states are not named in it; nearly all the characteristic powers of sovereignty are expressly granted to the general government, and expressly prohibited to the states," etc.

John Lothrop Motley, since Minister to England, in a letter to the London Times in 1861, on "the cause of the civil war," [I. Reb. Rec. 209] said: "It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a com

pact to which there were no parties or who ever heard of a compact made by a single party with himself! Yet the name of no state is mentioned in the whole document," etc.

Each State put her Name in the Compact. — Federal Constitution, Art. I., § 2 "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states. . . . The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000, but each state shall have at least one representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the state of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose 3, Massachusetts 8, Rhode Island 1, Connecticut 5, New York 6, New Jersey 4, Pennsylvania 8, Delaware 1, Maryland 6, Virginia 10, North Carolina 5, South Carolina 5, and Georgia 3. When vacancies happen in the representation from any state, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies."

We can now see why the "expounders" should get out of the loose preamble or preface, into the constitution itself. The very first article convicts them of two cardinal and flagrant mistakes. 1st. That the states are not named in the constitution. 2d. That the members of the lower house of the congress are the representatives of the people at large, i. e. of the nation, and not representatives of the political bodies called states, in which form alone "the people" existed, and could politically act. This matter will be discussed elsewhere.

CHAPTER IV.

SOME SAMPLES OF "SOPHISMES."

INTERPRETATION No. 5. THE SUPREME-LAW CLAUSE.

THE climax of all the Massachusetts school's arguments of " in

terpretation," is, that "This constitution shall be the supreme law of the land." If one ask-whose "constitution" or whose "supreme law" is it? Who made it? Whose "land" is referred to? Over what subjects is it "the supreme law"? the ready answer is another segment of the sophistical circle, viz., "We, the people' as a nation'do ordain and establish this constitution.""

It is obvious that all "the people," at the time of forming the constitution, were states. The association continued to be "the united states," as it had been under the previous constitution. "The people" remained "the people of the united states," the instrument of union, "the constitution of the united states," and the general governing agency, "the government of the united states." These are the very phrases of the constitution. They plainly mean that "the people," "the constitution," and "the government," belong to the said states, "the united [or associated] states."

The people chose to be, and remain, organized as states; and they were incapable of political action in any other form. Being republics, sovereignty, or the right of self-government, necessarily resided in each. As Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and other fathers, explained: "the sovereignty is in the people before they make a constitution, and remains in them after it is made."

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As republics, they intended to govern not be governed. Of their constitutions, or frames of government, the federal one is "the supreme law of the land." It is the "law" (i. e. the expression of the will) of the conjoint law-makers, not above them, but above their subjects, and their agencies of government. Their constitution can be no law over them, for as to them it has no sanction or means of enforcement. A law without a sanction is no law.

Many politicians seem to have vague notions on this subject. Hon. A. H. Stephens, in his "War between the States," p. 40, says:

"The

exercise of supreme law-making power, even over the authority delegating it, may be legitimate so long as the delegated power is unresumed." Is there ever such an "exercise"? Mr. Stephens ought to explain, with illustrations.

The Fathers' Idea of “the Supreme Law." The plain and simple idea of the fathers was this: The states, being constitutors of the constitution, ordained that where conflict should arise between this and any other law of the land, this should be supreme, - all laws being expressions of their wills; federal laws being made by their joint will, and state laws by their several wills.

Said HAMILTON meeting this very claim of Messrs. Webster and Story-then, a charge, by enemies, of danger in the clause: "The word 'supreme' imports no more than this, that the constitution and laws made in pursuance thereof, cannot be controlled or defeated by any other law. . . . But the laws of congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme, or binding. In the same manner, the states [he meant the state governments] have certain independent powers, in which their laws are supreme." Again, he said: "The laws of the united states are supreme, as to all their proper constitutional objects. The laws of the states are supreme in the same way." [II. Ell. Deb. 362.]

Said JUDGE IREDELL, in the North Carolina ratifying convention, about said supreme law: "What is the meaning of this? . . . It is saying no more than that, when we adopt the government, we will maintain and obey it; in the same manner, as if the constitution of the state had said, that when a law is passed in conformity to it, we must obey that law. Would this be objected to? Then, when congress passes a law, consistent with the constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If congress, under pretence of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the constitution." [IV. Ibid. 178-9.]

Said WILLIAM R. DAVIE, in the same convention: "Every power ceded by it must be executed. . . . It is not the 'supreme law' in the exercise of a power not granted. . . . To vest the federal government with power to legislate, and then deny supremacy in the laws, is a solecism in terms." [Ibid. 182.]

JUDGE PARSONS, afterwards the celebrated chief justice of Massachusetts, said the same thing in substance, in the ratifying convention of that state : 66 an act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law." [II. Ell. Deb. 94.]

It is needless to quote further, for these were the opinions of all. The truth is, the supreme-law clause of the constitution was a mere emphasis of a fact or principle, the enunciation of a truism. Any

and every law is supreme, in the sense intended, when there is no conflicting law above it - even, for instance, the order of a parent to a child, or a master to a servant. Any rule, within an authorized sphere, and on a rightful subject, is supreme, from the decree of an autocrat down to the ordinance of a town council. And, in the very nature of things, the compact of the states overrides their home and peculiar laws, even without the phrase I speak of; for the very engagement of the parties, to which their faith is pledged, is that no one of them shall nullify, defeat, or even interfere with, what all, for the common good, have agreed on. If the nations of Europe were to federalize themselves to-day, each would proceed to-morrow to make every home and local law conform to the treaty. The idea is as old as international agreements, that a state's compact with other states is "the supreme law of the land" in her territory; and all her courts, upon finding any other law conflicting with it, would necessarily and dutifully decide it to be "supreme."

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Moreover, it is absurd to suppose the commonwealths created a government and delegated to it authority and means to destroy them. Nay, more, the fathers unanimously excluded from the constitution all power and means of contending against the will of a state, saying that the coercion of a state was visionary and fallacious" [Madison], "one of the maddest projects ever devised" [Hamilton], and equivalent to "war" [Randolph, Ellsworth, and others], and all agreed that it was inconsistent with the voluntary union of states which was aimed at by all and finally, if this "supreme law of the land" is over the states, individually and collectively, why did Messrs. Seward, Greeley, Everett, and others, admit the want of power, in the general government, to coerce the states? and why are so many misstatements and sophistries needed to strengthen the "public convictions," and give ease to the public conscience on this subject?

The Expounders prove too much. If the constitution is a law over one state, it is over all, "the united states," even, being subordinate; and Lincoln was right in his expression that "the states have no status or rights" except those "reserved to them by the nation, in its constitution." In other words, the stupid states have put their "supreme law" over, and thereby subjugated, themselves: and given their own citizens and chosen agents full power to coerce their obedience.

INTERPRETATON No. 6. - PARTLY FEDERAL AND PARTLY NATIONAL.

In Article 39 of the Federalist are to be found several little sentences, which have done much detached duty in the great contest

supposed to be a logical one as to whether the constitution is a compact or not. The expounders use them to prove that our general polity is partly federal and partly national in character, the national

part predominating; so that, practically, we are a great political unit, made up of municipal fractions, called states but really counties, and that "so far as the constitution goes, so far state sovereignty is effectually controlled." [Webster.] One of these sentences is the heading hereof.

None of "the writers of the Federalist" or other fathers hinted at any nation acting in the premises, or at the states being reduced to provinces or counties. In the article alluded to, Mr. Madison said, "The act establishing the constitution will not be a national but a federal act." "Each state" is to ratify, continued he, "as a sovereign body," and is "only to be bound by its own voluntary act.". "In this relation, then, it will be a federal and not a national constitution." He then shows how, in their compact, the sovereigns, as to the certain matters provided for, treat their aggregate subjects as a nation; and concludes that "the proposed constitution is " neither a national nor a federal one, but a composition of both," i. e. it is federal in the establishment of it, but, pro tanto, national in operation.

Mr. Madison's obvious meaning was, that the states, as separate parties, each acting with her own will, compacted to establish the constitution, and agreed therein to govern their respective subjects together, as to the general matters the constitution was made for; thus treating them as if a nation. And the true idea is, that so far as the federal compact goes, the people are quasi a nation -- not in political existence, organism, or power, but as subjects of government. It is also true that the constitutors and components of that nation are the states, and that the people of that nation are entirely, exclusively, "and absolutely" the "citizens of different states," and, of course, the subjects thereof.

Articles III., § 2; IV., § 2; and the 11th Amendment, show that there were no citizens of a nation; and Article I. names the states as pre-existent bodies, while the whole instrument contains no hint of their change in name (either proper or technical), geography, organism, or political authority; but, throughout its whole extent, recognizes and provides for them as the parties to it, the actors under it, and the sources of all federal elections and federal power. In short, the phrase - "the united states," makes and ends the whole argument.

The Senate Federal the House National. The mixed character is pretendedly inferred from another source. In illustrating it, the expounders allege that the senators are to represent states, but