manner as the
majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of
the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the
individual votes or by considering the will of the majority of
the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people
of the United States. Neither of these has been adopted. Each
State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a
sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound
by its own voluntary act."[51]

It is a tedious task to have to expose the misstatements, both of fact
and of principle, which have occupied so much attention, but it is
rendered necessary by the extent to which they have been imposed upon
the acceptance of the public, through reckless assertion and confident
and incessant repetition.

"'I remember,' says Mr. Webster, 'to have heard Chief-Justice
Marshall ask counsel, who was insisting upon the authority of an
act of legislation, _if he thought an act of legislation could
create or destroy a fact, or change the truth of history_?
"Would it alter the fact," said he, "if a Legislature should
solemnly enact that Mr. Hume never wrote the History of
England?" A Legislature may alter the law,' continues Mr.
Webster, 'but no power can reverse a fact.' Hence, if the
Convention of 1787 had expressly declared that the Constitution
was [to be] ordained by 'the people of the United States _in the
aggregate_,' or by the people of America as one nation, this
would not have destroyed the fact that it was ratified by each
State for itself, and that each State was bound only by 'its own
voluntary act.'" (Bledsoe.)

But the Convention, as we have seen, said no such thing. No such
community as "the people of the United States in the aggregate" is known
to it, or ever acted on it. It was ordained, established, and ratified
by the people of the several States; and no theories or assertions of a
later generation can change or conceal this fixed fact, as it stands
revealed in the light of contemporaneous records.

[Footnote 43: Article I, section 9, clause 8.]

[Footnote 44: Article II, section 1, clause 6.]

[Footnote 45: Article III, section 2.]

[Footnote 46: Article III, section 3.]

[Footnote 47: "American Museum," February, 1788.]

[Footnote 48: Benton's "Abridgment," vol. x, p. 448.]

[Footnote 49: See address by Edward Everett at the Academy of