been sovereign throughout the history of the
government. They are sovereign to-day.
If the States are sovereign; if they are the
parties to this great compact; if they are the
framers of it; if they have made the law and
the Constitution by which we have been
guided throughout all our history does it not
follow, as the shadow follows the substance,
that if you make a power which is merely to
act as the agent for the purpose of carrying
out certain great objects, and if you delegate
your sovereignty to that power, you make the
creature above the creator? is that consistent
with the ordinary affairs of life, and the ordi-
nary relations of men, and of systems of gov-
ernment? Is it consistent with the theory of
Deity himself?
I contend that the sovereignty of the States
remains in the people thereof respectively;
and that when they entered into this great
confederacy of States, when they formed this
great Federal Government, for which I had
and still have, under the Constitution, as
great a reverence as any other man, it was so
understood, in days gone by, and not many
years past, standing upon the soil of the
proud old State of Virginia, in one of their
most ancient cities, I said to these people then,
that if they dissolved this Union, not only
would the judicial bench be thereby prostrated
in the dust, but the besom of destruction
would sweep over their whole political hori-
zon, blotting out forever those brilliant stars
which then studded the, milky way of con-
federate liberty: that the voice of peace would
be hushed amidst the clash of separate inter-
ests and discordant elements, and man's capa-
city of self-government would become the
subject of idle mockery, it was no prophecy
of mine. It was a doctrine which I had
learned from every statesman from Maine to
Georgia, that if you attempted to breakdown
those great cardinal principles which underlie
the government; if you abandon that Consti-
tution which was the great shield and pro-
tector of the whole of the States; if you
abandoned that great charter of liberty, and
entered upon the wild field of speculation,
you would produce a jarring of interests, and
you would bring about a conflict between the
States, which would finally bring about a
dissolution of the Union.
I say that the very fact that the States
stood so long together, is one of the strongest
arguments, to nay mind, of the general recog-
nition of the sovereign power of each State.
I do not believe there was that in the charac-
ter or the minds of the American people which
would induce them to submit to tyranny in
any shape or form. I believe that if they had
suppled as many of them professed to sup-
pose, that there were grievous and oppressive
wrongs inflicted on them, they would have
gone out of this Union long ago, at all haz-
ards. But believing and knowing the sover-
eignty and the equality of the States, they |
determined to appeal to reason and argument.
They appealed to the feelings of men; to the
sympathies and common bonds of the past;
to the glories of the present, and to the bril-
liant prospects of the future career of this
country, to induce them to stand by their
constitutional rights. I say that it was the
sovereign equality generally recognized as
lying at the basis of the government that in-
duced these men 80 long to live peaceably and
quietly under what they conceived to be griev-
ous oppression.
if you once admit the fact that sovereignty
and equality will bind this government to-
gether; that the universal recognition of the
sovereignty and equality of the States will
bind it together forever, so far as any human
foresight can see, is it not the bounded duty
of every patriot in the land, it be could not
see clearly that the adoption of the Constitu-
tion had so put it in the charter itself; if he
could not by any reasonable argument say
that it was there, to struggle to the utmost to
have it put there. So far as we, in our indi-
vidual capacity herein the State of Maryland,
can do any thing towards the attainment of
this great object, it ought to be done by this
Convention; because if this is a sovereign
Convention it alone can do anything that will
be valid.
I say then that instead of putting in the bill
of rights that we recognize paramount allegi-
ance in the government of the United States,
we should put in there what it was always
intended should be in our bill of rights, and
what was always intended should be the duty
of every citizen whether in the bill of rights
or not; and that is, that he owes obedience
to the Constitution of the United States, and
to the laws made in pursuance thereof. But
to say that his allegiance is given up simply
because he owes obedience, there is no more
necessity for than there is where a man or a
government appoints an agent, if this gov-
ernment, for example, appointed a minister to
England or France, that man is the agent of
the government, and has a right to do any-
thing that his power of attorney gives him
the power to do. But I hardly conceive that
any one would suppose lie bad a right to act
without any limitation or discretion outside
of his power of attorney. He is bound down
by the instrument giving him his authority,
and must act by that.
So with the government of these United
States. The distinct authorities which have
been read here to-day, and read here for sev-
eral days, and which have come down to us
in ponderous volumes for years, show that
the Government of the United States was
formed by the people of the States, and not by
the people of the United States in the aggre-
gate. There is one fact alluded to to-day,
that, it seems to me, ought to place the ques-
tion beyond all doubt, if there were not ar-
gument upon argument piled already. It is |
