Consolidated Government.
When
Mr. Henry, who was not a member of the
Philadelphia convention, charged that the expression, ‘We, the people of the
United States,’ in terms implied a consolidated government.
Mr. Madison, the foremost architect of the
Constitution, replied: ‘Who are the parties to it?
(the
Constitution). The people.
But not the people as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.
Were it, as the gentlemen asserts, a consolidated government, the consent of a majority of the people would be sufficient for its establishment.’
The bare recital of these facts would seem to demonstrate that in the formation of the
Constitution, and the resulting Union, the States acted as separate sovereignties, and that the government thus created, was the result of a compact between them, and not the act of the people as a whole.
The powers of the
Federal Government, therefore, were delegated and not inherent; and to ascertain them it is only necessary to search the
Constitution, where those so delegated are enumerated.
In the conventions of
Virginia and New York, the question was raised as to the relative rights and powers of the
State and Federal governments, and in order to define more clearly the meaning of the
Constitution, and to establish more firmly the rights of the States, the resolution of the Virginia convention, in adopting the
Constitution, uses this language:
