ch the written constitution, or the constitution
of the government, derives all its force and vitality. The
organization of the American people, which he knew well--no man
better,--and which he so justly characterizes, he supposes to have been
deliberately formed by the people themselves, through the
convention--not given them by Providence as their original and inherent
constitution. But this was merely the effect of the general doctrine
which he had adopted, in common with nearly all his contemporaries, of
the origin of the state in compact, and may be eliminated from his view
of what the constitution actually is, without affecting that view
itself.

Mr. Madison lays great stress on the fact that though the constitution
of the Union was formed by the States, it was formed, not by the
governments, but by the people of the several States; but this makes no
essential difference, if the people are the people of the States, and
sovereign in their severalty, and not in their union. Had it been
formed by the State governments with the acquiescence of the people, it
would have rested on as high authority as if formed by the people of
the State in convention assembled. The only difference is, that if the
State ratified it by the legislature, she could abrogate it by the
legislature; if in convention, she could abrogate it only in
convention. Mr. Madison, following Mr. Jefferson, supposes the
constitution makes the people of the several States one people for
certain specific purposes, and leaves it to be supposed that in regard
to all other matters, or in all other relations, they are sovereign;
and hence he makes the government a mixture of a consolidated
government and a confederated government, but neither the one nor the
other exclusively. Say the people of the United States were one people
in all respects, and under a government which is neither a consolidated
nor a confederated government, nor yet a mixture of the two, but a
government in which the powers of government are divided between a
general government and particular governments, each emanating from the
same source, and you will have the simple fact, and precisely what Mr.
Madison means, when is eliminated what is derived from his theory of
the origin of government in compact. It is this theory of the
conventional origin of the constitution, and which excludes the
Providential or real constitution of the people, that has misled him
and so many other eminent