be reassumed by the people_ whenever it
shall become necessary to their happiness."[93]

These expressions are not mere _obiter dicta_, thrown out incidentally,
and entitled only to be regarded as an expression of opinion by their
authors. Even if only such, they would carry great weight as the
deliberately expressed judgment of enlightened contemporaries, but they
are more: they are parts of the very acts or ordinances by which these
States ratified the Constitution and acceded to the Union, and can not
be detached from them. If they are invalid, the ratification itself was
invalid, for they are inseparable. By inserting these declarations in
their ordinances, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island, formally,
officially, and permanently, declared their interpretation of the
Constitution as recognizing the right of secession by the resumption of
their grants. By accepting the ratifications with this declaration
incorporated, the other States as formally accepted the principle which
it asserted.

I am well aware that it has been attempted to construe these
declarations concerning the right of _the people_ to reassume their
delegations of power--especially in the terms employed by Virginia,
"people of the United States"--as having reference to the idea of _one
people_, in mass, or "in the aggregate." But it can scarcely be possible
that any candid and intelligent reader, who has carefully considered the
evidence already brought to bear on the subject, can need further
argument to disabuse his mind of that political fiction. The "people of
the United States," from whom the powers of the Federal Government were
"derived," _could have been_ no other than the people who ordained and
ratified the Constitution; and this, it has been shown beyond the power
of denial, was done by the people of _each State_, severally and
independently. No other _people_ were known to the authors of the
declarations above quoted. Mr. Madison was a leading member of the
Virginia Convention, which made that declaration, as well as of the
general Convention that drew up the Constitution. We have seen what
_his_ idea of "the people of the United States" was--"not the people as
composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen
sovereignties."[94] Mr. Lee, of Westmoreland ("Light-Horse Harry"), in
the same Convention, answering Mr. Henry's objection to the expression,
"We, the people," said: "It [the Constitution] is now submitted to _the
p