bid., vol. ii, p. 443.]

[Footnote 68: See "Life of Gouverneur Morris," vol. iii, p. 193.]

[Footnote 69: See "Writings of John Adams," vol. vii, letter of Roger
Sherman.]

[Footnote 70: See Eliott's "Debates," vol. ii, p. 197.]

[Footnote 71: "Law of Nations," Book I, chap. i, section 4.]

[Footnote 72: Ibid., section 10.]

[Footnote 73: Ibid., section 12.]

CHAPTER IX.

The same Subject continued.--The Tenth Amendment.--Fallacies
exposed.--"Constitution," "Government," and "People"
distinguished from each other.--Theories refuted by
Facts.--Characteristics of Sovereignty.--Sovereignty
identified.--Never thrown away.

If any lingering doubt could have existed as to the reservation of their
entire sovereignty by the people of the respective States, when they
organized the Federal Union, it would have been removed by the adoption
of the tenth amendment to the Constitution, which was not only one of
the amendments proposed by various States when ratifying that
instrument, but the particular one in which they substantially agreed,
and upon which they most urgently insisted. Indeed, it is quite certain
that the Constitution would never have received the assent and
ratification of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina,
and perhaps other States, but for a well-grounded assurance that the
substance of this amendment would be adopted as soon as the requisite
formalities could be complied with. That amendment is in these words:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to
the States respectively, or to the people."

The full meaning of this article may not be as clear to us as it was to
the men of that period, on account of the confusion of ideas by which
the term "people"--plain enough to them--has since been obscured, and
also the ambiguity attendant upon the use of the little conjunction
_or_, which has been said to be the most equivocal word in our language,
and for that reason has been excluded from indictments in the English
courts. The true intent and meaning of the provision, however, may be
ascertained from an examination and comparison of the terms in which it
was expressed by the various States which proposed it, and whose ideas
it was intended to embody.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in their ordinances of ratification,
expressing the opinion "that certain amendments an