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 statesmen and
constitutional lawyers.
The convention did not create the Union or unite the States, for
it was assembled by the authority of the United States who were
present in it. The United States or Union existed before the
convention, as the convention itself affirms in declaring one of
its purposes to be "to provide for a more perfect union.
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