prerogative that the taxing power of the general government is superior and paramount, and must first be satisfied before the local commonwealths can put into operation their subordinate function of taxation. Finally, the general government is to be the sole judge of what particular measures are fit, proper, and necessary in order to carry these general grants of power into practical execution. I have not here enumer ated all of the legislative functions of the United States Congress, but only noticed those most important for the purposes of the present inquiry.

§ 106. The mere recital of these tells its own story. Can that political society possess any attribute of sovereignty, which is forbidden to wage offensive or defensive war, and thus to maintain its own existence; and which is unable to raise and support an army or navy; and which is deprived of the right to coin money; and which possesses no control over commerce; and which must exercise its power of taxation in subordination to another body-politic? To predicate sovereignty of commonwealths debarred from these functions, is to ignore the meaning of terms and the nature of attributes.

§ 107. V. The Executive Powers. The Constitution recognizes our nationality in the essential nature of the powers conferred upon the Executive. He is the commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States, and, as such, has the entire, exclusive control and direction of war, after hostilities have been declared and armies and navies raised by Congress. He, with the advice and consent of the Senate, must enter into all treaties with foreign countries, and appoint all important officers in the general service. He holds intercourse with other nations through means of ambassadors. Finally, he is charged with the duty of executing all laws of the United States. These are attributes of independent sovereignty, capable of being conferred on an official only by the political society in which that sovereignty resides.

§ 108. VI. The Judicial Powers. The Constitution recognizes our nationality in the essential character of the powers conferred upon its judiciary. Many of these are exclusively held by the courts of the nation, and are commensurate with

the legislative functions granted to the government. I need now refer but to a single one of the judicial powers, but that one is of the utmost importance. As the Supreme Court has jurisdiction in all cases arising under the Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made under their authority, it follows that this tribunal is the final interpreter of the Constitution and of all laws and treaties made by the United States, and of all laws made by the several states so far as they conflict with the organic law; and its decisions, forming a part of the great body of unwritten jurisprudence, are the supreme law of the land. State constitutions and laws, as well as acts of Congress, may be reviewed, questioned, condemned, and declared null and void by the national judiciary. No other court in the world is clothed with such functions.

§ 109. VII. Finally, the Constitution recognizes our nationality in providing means for the sovereign people to make amendments in their organic law. This power of amendment, when exercised in the appointed manner, is absolutely unlimited. Article V. explains the methods which must be followed by the people in availing themselves of this inherent and absolute control over the fundamental law. "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as a part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year 1808, shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state without its consent shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."

§ 110. Here is no limit upon the power of amendment, but only upon the modes in which that power shall be exerted. The proviso with which the article closes, plainly implies that

amendments may be adopted which oppose further and greater limitations upon the several states, than those under which they now hold certain restricted legislative functions. It may be remarked, in passing, that the first eleven articles of the amendments, which were adopted almost immediately after the establishment of the present government, are all restrictive of the powers of that government, while the last amendment abolishing slavery is restrictive of the powers of the states, and enlarges those of Congress.

Whatever was the political society that formed the Constitution and government for itself, may change that Constitution and government. This is a proposition self-evident. I need not repeat the reasons which have been already advanced to show that the one people of the United States, the nation, is the sole author of this scheme of organization.

§ 111. The people, if they were the original authors, may decree a revision. If, on the contrary, the separate states were the original creators, they alone can remodel their work, and no one of them can bind the others each has only authority within its own jurisdiction; the very idea of sovereignty excludes any power in another body-politic to limit the functions of a state against its consent. We find, therefore, that those who have opposed particular amendments as the one abolishing slavery on the ground that they were beyond the authority of the people to make, have been compelled to place themselves on the dogma of state sovereignty; as the sole foundation and support of their position. But the Constitution in this very article recognizes the fact that states may be brought under the sanction and obligation of an amendment, without their assent, and even with their decided opposition; and thus another is added to the many features of our organic law, which are utterly inconsistent with any assumed sovereignty in the separate commonwealths. For, granting the correctness of the theory that the several states were once political sovereignties, and that each surrendered a portion of its inherent powers to the general government, such surrender would go no further than the express

provisions of the Constitution; as to all other matters not reached by that instrument, their sovereignty would remain intact. By this theory, then, it is entirely impossible that three fourths of the states can compel the remaining one fourth to give up a further portion of their attributes, contrary to their will.

§ 112. But our nationality does not need to be supported by arguments so apparently technical. It rests secure on the broad ground that the one people made, and they alone can unmake; that they reared the original structure, and have full power to enlarge and extend it. The capacities residing in them are boundless; their will, under God, is supreme; Constitutions and governments are their instruments and servants, not their masters.

§ 113. Nor is the force of this general truth weakened in the case of our own nation, by the carefully arranged formulas according to which the people must proceed to ascertain and record their sovereign will in any attempt at amendment. As all power originally and now resides in the one body politic, that society had, among others, the attribute of determining the means and methods by which alone it could effect, in an organized and lawful manner, a revision of its organic law; of marking out the channel through which alone its reconstructive force could be directed. Among a thousand different schemes it had an unlimited choice; and having once chosen it could declare that this selection was irrevocable

except by revolution. For revolution is nothing but the people acting above and beyond the constituted order of things, in defiance of what has been considered law, but still in pursuance of inherent powers which they hold superior to law. I am, therefore, not speaking of the right of revolution, for that is not constitutional, but extra-constitutional.

§ 114. Our forefathers, when they adopted the present fundamental law, might have declared that amendments thereto should require only the assent of a majority of citizens entitled to suffrage; or should require absolute unanimity. They might, on the other hand, have committed the entire subject to Congress, and thus have made our government similar to

that of Great Britain in the omnipotence of its legislature. Of the motives which led them to the very choice they made, it is not necessary for us now to inquire. It is sufficient for our purpose that they chose a certain plan, while they might have adopted any other. The form, therefore, which must be pursued, has nothing in it essential; it does not modify, limit, or abridge the powers which can be wielded by and through that form. All the separate votes of Congress and state legislatures or conventions are but the machinery that was thought serviceable for ascertaining and publishing the popular will. If the Constitution had required absolute unanimity among voters, then any amendment might have been passed by unanimous consent; if it had required only a majority of all voters, then any amendment might have been passed by such majority; if the reconstructive power had been committed to Congress, as representatives of the people, then any amendment might have been passed by Congress. The fact that the people are now to be consulted, not in the aggregate, but as they are collected into local communities or commonwealths, does not affect this unlimited power of revision; for there was nothing which compelled the adoption of this particular method, it was only chosen from motives of expediency.

§ 115. The result of this discussion is, that the People of the United States, by virtue of their inherent, absolute attributes as a nation, may, by following the order prescribed in the Constitution, adopt any amendments thereto, whether such changes would enlarge or diminish the functions of the general government, whether they would widen or contract the scope. of state legislation. Nay, it is possible that the idea of local self-government, which underlies our present civil polity, might be entirely abandoned, and the plan of complete consolidation substituted in its stead; even a monarchy might be reared in the place of the present republic. It is true that the people have placed an almost insurmountable obstacle to such action on their part, for they have required a species of unanimity as a prerequisite to a reconstruction which should destroy the states as distinctive elements in our political organ