he strength
of their respective States. In the election of President and
Vice-President the Constitution (Article II) prescribes that "_each
State_ shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct, a number of electors" for the purpose of choosing a President
and Vice-President. The number of these electors is based partly upon
the equal sovereignty, partly upon the unequal population of the
respective States.

It is, then, absolutely true that there has never been any such thing as
a vote of "the people of the United States in the aggregate"; no such
people is recognized by the Constitution; and no such political
community has ever existed. It is equally true that no officer or
department of the General Government formed by the Constitution derives
authority from a majority of the whole people of the United States, or
has ever been chosen by such majority. As little as any other is the
United States Government a government of a majority of the mass.

[Footnote 35: Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i, chap.
ix.]

[Footnote 36: Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i, chap.
ix.]

[Footnote 37: "American Archives," fourth series, vol. i, p. 908.]

CHAPTER V.

The Preamble to the Constitution.--"We, the People."

The preamble to the Constitution proposed by the Convention of 1787 is
in these words:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States
of America."

The phraseology of this preamble has been generally regarded as the
stronghold of the advocates of consolidation. It has been interpreted as
meaning that "we, the people of the United States," as a collective
body, or as a "nation," in our aggregate capacity, had "ordained and
established" the Constitution _over_ the States.

This interpretation constituted, in the beginning, the most serious
difficulty in the way of the ratification of the Constitution. It was
probably this to which that sturdy patriot, Samuel Adams, of
Massachusetts, alluded, when he wrote to Richard Henry Lee, "I stumble
at the threshold." Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention, on the
third day of the session, and in the very opening