dge for themselves.

I have admitted, that, if the Constitution were to be considered as the
creature of the State governments, it might be modified, interpreted, or
construed according to their pleasure. But, even in that case, it would
be necessary that they should _agree_. One alone could not interpret it
conclusively; one alone could not construe it; one alone could not
modify it. Yet the gentleman's doctrine is, that Carolina alone may
construe and interpret that compact which equally binds all, and gives
equal rights to all.

So, then, Sir, even supposing the Constitution to be a compact between
the States, the gentleman's doctrine, nevertheless, is not maintainable;
because, first, the general government is not a party to that compact,
but a _government_ established by it, and vested by it with the powers
of trying and deciding doubtful questions; and secondly, because, if the
Constitution be regarded as a compact, not one State only, but all the
States, are parties to that compact, and one can have no right to fix
upon it her own peculiar construction.

So much, Sir, for the argument, even if the premises of the gentleman
were granted, or could be proved. But, Sir, the gentleman has failed to
maintain his leading proposition. He has not shown, it cannot be shown,
that the Constitution is a compact between State governments. The
Constitution itself, in its very front, refutes that idea; it declares
that it is ordained and established _by the people of the United
States_. So far from saying that it is established by the governments of
the several States, it does not even say that it is established by the
people _of the several States_; but it pronounces that it is established
by the people of the United States, in the aggregate. The gentleman
says, it must mean no more than the people of the several States.
Doubtless, the people of the several States, taken collectively,
constitute the people of the United States; but it is in this, their
collective capacity, it is as all the people of the United States, that
they establish the Constitution. So they declare; and words cannot be
plainer than the words used.

When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between the
States, he uses language exactly applicable to the old Confederation. He
speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. He describes fully that
old state of things then existing. The Confederation was, in strictness,
a compact; the States, as