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he strength of their respective States. In the election of President and Vice-President the Constitution (Article II) prescribes that "_each State_ shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors" for the purpose of choosing a President and Vice-President. The number of these electors is based partly upon the equal sovereignty, partly upon the unequal population of the respective States. It is, then, absolutely true that there has never been any such thing as a vote of "the people of the United States in the aggregate"; no such people is recognized by the Constitution; and no such political community has ever existed. It is equally true that no officer or department of the General Government formed by the Constitution derives authority from a majority of the whole people of the United States, or has ever been chosen by such majority. As little as any other is the United States Government a government of a majority of the mass. [Footnote 35: Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i, chap. ix.] [Footnote 36: Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i, chap. ix.] [Footnote 37: "American Archives," fourth series, vol. i, p. 908.] CHAPTER V. The Preamble to the Constitution.--"We, the People." The preamble to the Constitution proposed by the Convention of 1787 is in these words: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The phraseology of this preamble has been generally regarded as the stronghold of the advocates of consolidation. It has been interpreted as meaning that "we, the people of the United States," as a collective body, or as a "nation," in our aggregate capacity, had "ordained and established" the Constitution _over_ the States. This interpretation constituted, in the beginning, the most serious difficulty in the way of the ratification of the Constitution. It was probably this to which that sturdy patriot, Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, alluded, when he wrote to Richard Henry Lee, "I stumble at the threshold." Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention, on the third day of the session, and in the very opening
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