o the London "Times," in the same year,
1861, on the "Causes of the Civil War," by Mr. John Lothrop Motley,
afterward Minister to the Court of St. James. In this letter Mr. Motley
says of the Constitution of the United States:

"It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to which
there were no parties? or who ever heard of a compact made by a
single party with himself? Yet the name of no State is mentioned
in the whole document; the States themselves are only mentioned
to receive commands or prohibitions; and the 'people of the
United States' is the single party by whom alone the instrument
is executed.

"The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was not
promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified by
the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no power
to secede from it. It was 'ordained and established' over the
States by a power superior to the States; by the people of the
whole land in their aggregate capacity," etc.

It would be very hard to condense a more amazing amount of audacious and
reckless falsehood in the same space. In all Mr. Motley's array of bold
assertions, there is not one single truth--unless it be, perhaps, that
"the Constitution was not drawn up by the States." Yet it was drawn up
by their delegates, and it is of such material as this, derived from
writers whose reputation gives a semblance of authenticity to their
statements, that history is constructed and transmitted.

One of the most remarkable--though, perhaps, the least important--of
these misstatements is that which is also twice repeated by Mr.
Everett--that the name of no State is mentioned in the whole document,
or, as he puts it, "the States are not named in it." Very little careful
examination would have sufficed to find, in the second section of the
very first article of the Constitution, the names of every one of the
thirteen then existent States distinctly mentioned, with the number of
representatives to which each would be entitled, in case of acceding to
the Constitution, until a census of their population could be taken. The
mention there made of the States by name is of no special significance;
it has no bearing upon any question of principle; and the denial of it
is a purely gratuitous illustration of the recklessness of those from
whom it proceeds, and the low estimate put on the intelligence of those
addressed. It serves, howeve