eme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable; and
that extreme difficulty, which might perpetuate its discovered faults.
It, moreover, equally enables the general and the State governments to
originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by the
experience on one side, or on the other. The exception in favor of the
equality of suffrage in the Senate, was probably meant as a palladium
to the residuary sovereignty of the States, implied and secured by that
principle of representation in one branch of the legislature; and
was probably insisted on by the States particularly attached to that
equality. The other exception must have been admitted on the same
considerations which produced the privilege defended by it.

9. "The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be
sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the
States, ratifying the same."

This article speaks for itself. The express authority of the people
alone could give due validity to the Constitution. To have required the
unanimous ratification of the thirteen States, would have subjected
the essential interests of the whole to the caprice or corruption of
a single member. It would have marked a want of foresight in the
convention, which our own experience would have rendered inexcusable.

Two questions of a very delicate nature present themselves on this
occasion: 1. On what principle the Confederation, which stands in the
solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the
unanimous consent of the parties to it? 2. What relation is to subsist
between the nine or more States ratifying the Constitution, and the
remaining few who do not become parties to it?

The first question is answered at once by recurring to the absolute
necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to
the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares
that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all
political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must
be sacrificed. PERHAPS, also, an answer may be found without searching
beyond the principles of the compact itself. It has been heretofore
noted among the defects of the Confederation, that in many of the States
it had received no higher sanction than a mere legislative ratification.
The principle of reciprocality seems to require that its obligation
on the other States should be reduced to