arolina and
Pennsylvania conventions, he says:

"The _first_ of the two North Carolina conventions is contained in this
volume; the _second_ convention, it is believed, _was neither
systematically reported nor printed_." "The debates in the Pennsylvania
convention, that have been preserved, it appears, _are on one side
only_; a search into the contemporary publications of the day, has been
unsuccessful to furnish us with the other side of the question."

In his preface to the fourth volume, he says:

"In compiling the opinions, on constitutional questions, delivered in
congress, by some of the most enlightened senators and representatives,
the files of the New York and Philadelphia newspapers, from 1789 to
1800, had to be relied on; from the latter period to the present, the
National Intelligencer is the authority consulted for the desired
information."

It is from such stuff as this, collected and published thirty-five and
forty years after the constitution was adopted--stuff very suitable for
constitutional dreams to be made of--that our courts and people now make
their constitutional law, in preference to adopting the law of the
constitution itself. In this way they manufacture law strong enough to
bind three millions of men in slavery.]

CHAPTER X.

THE PRACTICE OF THE GOVERNMENT.

The practice of the government, under the constitution, has not altered
the legal meaning of the instrument. It means now what it did before it
was ratified, when it was first offered to the people for their adoption
or rejection. One of the advantages of a written constitution is, that
it enables the people to see what its character is before they adopt it;
and another is, that it enables them to see, after they have adopted it,
whether the government adheres to it, or departs from it. Both these
advantages, each of which is indispensable to liberty, would be entirely
forfeited, if the legal meaning of a written constitution were one thing
when the instrument was offered to the people for their adoption, and
could then be made another thing by the government after the people had
adopted it.

It is of no consequence, therefore, what meaning the government _have_
placed upon the instrument; but only what meaning they were _bound to
place upon it_ from the beginning.

The only question, then, to be decided, is, what was the meaning of the
constitution, _as a legal instrument_, when it was first drawn up, and
presented to