The convention is held to be the convention of the people, and to
be clothed with the full authority of the sovereign people, and
it is in this that it differs from the congress or the
legislature. It is not a congress of delegates or ministers who
are obliged to act under instructions, to report their acts to
their respective sovereigns for approval or rejection; it is
itself sovereign, and may do whatever the people themselves can
do. There is no necessity for it to appeal to a plebiscitum to
complete its acts. That the convention, on the score of
prudence, is wise in doing so, nobody questions; but the
convention is always competent, if it chooses, to ordain the
constitution without appeal. The power competent to ordain the
constitution is always competent to change, modify, or amend it.
That amendments to the constitution of the government can be
adopted only by being proposed by a convention of all the States
in the Union, or by being proposed, by a two-thirds vote of both
houses of Congress, and ratified by three-fourths of the States,
is simply a conventional ordinance, which the convention can
change at its pleasure. It proves nothing as it stands but the
will of the convention.
The term ratification itself, because the term commonly used in
reference to treaties between sovereign powers, has been seized
on, since sometimes used by the convention, to prove that the
constitution emanates from the States severally, and is a treaty
or compact between sovereign states, not an organic or
fundamental law ordained by a single sovereign will; but this
argument is inadmissible, because, as we have just seen, the
convention is competent to ordain the constitution without
submitting it for ratification, and because the convention uses
sometimes the word adopt instead of the word ratify.
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