eople of Virginia_. If we do not adopt it, it will be always null and
void as to us. Suppose it was found proper for our adoption, and
becoming the government of _the people of Virginia_, by what style
should it be done? Ought we not to make use of the name of the people?
No other style would be proper."[95] It would certainly be superfluous,
after all that has been presented heretofore, to add any further
evidence of the meaning that was attached to these expressions by their
authors. "The people of the United States" were in their minds the
people of Virginia, the people of Massachusetts, and the people of every
other State that should agree to unite. They _could_ have meant only
that the people of their respective States who had delegated certain
powers to the Federal Government, in ratifying the Constitution and
_acceding_ to the Union, reserved to themselves the right, in event of
the failure of their purposes, to "resume" (or "reassume") those powers
by _seceding_ from the same Union.

Finally, the absurdity of the construction attempted to be put upon
these expressions will be evident from a very brief analysis. If the
assertion of the right of reassumption of their powers was meant for the
protection of _the whole people_--the people in mass--the people "in the
aggregate"--of a consolidated republic--against whom or what was it to
protect them? By whom were the powers granted to be perverted to the
injury or oppression of the whole people? By themselves or by some of
the States, all of whom, according to this hypothesis, had been
consolidated into one? As no danger could have been apprehended from
either of these, it must have been against the _Government_ of the
United States that the provision was made; that is to say, the whole
people of a republic make this declaration against a Government
established by themselves and entirely subject to their own control,
under a Constitution which contains provision for its own amendment by
this very same "whole people," whenever they may think proper! Is it not
a libel upon the statesmen of that generation to attribute to their
grave and solemn declarations a meaning so vapid and absurd?

To those who argue that the grants of the Constitution are fatal to the
reservation of sovereignty by the States, the Constitution furnishes a
conclusive answer in the amendment which was coeval with the adoption of
the instrument, and which declares that all powers not delegated to the