" No power
except that which ordains is or can be competent to amend a
constitution of government. The particular mode prescribed by
the convention in which the constitution of the government may be
amended has no bearing on the present argument, because it is
prescribed by the States united, not severally, and the power to
amend is evidently reserved, not indeed to the General
government, but to the United States; for the ratification by any
State or Territory not in the Union counts for nothing. The
States united, can, in the way prescribed, give more or less
power to the General government, and reserve more or less power
to the States individually. The so-called reserved powers are
really reserved to the people of the United States, who can make
such disposition of them as seems to them good.
The conclusion, then, that the General government holds from the
States united, not from the States severally, is not invalidated
by the fact that its constitution was completed only by the
ratification of the States in their individual capacity. The
ratification was made necessary by the will of the people in
convention assembled; but the convention was competent to
complete it and put it in force without that ratification, had it
so willed. The general practice under the American system is for
the convention to submit the constitution it has agreed on to the
people, to be accepted or rejected by a plebiscitum; but such
submission, though it may be wise and prudent, is not necessary.
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