The rights and powers of the state, they held, were made up of
the rights held by individuals under the law of nature, and which
the individuals surrendered to civil society on its formation.
So they supposed that independent sovereign states might meet in
convention, mutually agree to surrender a portion of their
rights, organize their surrendered rights into a real government,
and leave the convention shorn, at least, of a portion of their
sovereignty. This doctrine crops out everywhere in the writings
of the elder Adams, and is set forth with rare ability by
Mr. Webster, in his great speech in the Senate against the State
sovereignty doctrine of General Hayne and Mr. Calhoun, which won
for him the honorable title of Expounder of the Constitution--and
expound it he, no doubt, did in the sense of its framers. He
boldly concedes that prior to the adoption of the constitution,
the people of the United States were severally sovereign states,
but by the constitution they were made one sovereign political
community or people, and that the States, though retaining
certain rights, have merged their several sovereignty in the
Union.
The subtle mind of Mr. Calhoun, who did not hold that a state can
originate in compact, proved to Mr. Webster that his theory could
not stand; that, if the States went into the convention sovereign
States, they came out of it sovereign States; and that the
constitution they formed could from the nature of the case be
only a treaty, compact, or agreement between sovereigns.
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