statesmen and constitutional lawyers.

The convention did not create the Union or unite the States, for it was
assembled by the authority of the United States who were present in it.
The United States or Union existed before the convention, as the
convention itself affirms in declaring one of its purposes to be "to
provide for a more perfect union." If there had been no union, it
could not and would not have spoken of providing for a more perfect
union, but would have stated its purpose to be to create or form a
union. The convention did not form the Union, nor in fact provide for
a more perfect union; it simply provided for the more perfect
representation or expression in the General government of the Union
already existing. The convention, in common with the statesmen at the
time, recognized no unwritten or Providential constitution of a people,
and regarded the constitution of government as the constitution of the
state, and consequently sometimes put the state for the government. In
interpreting its language, it is necessary to distinguish between its
act and its theory. Its act is law, its theory is not. The convention
met, among other things, to organize a government which should more
perfectly represent the union of the States than did the government
created by the Articles of Confederation.

The convention, certainly, professes to grant or concede powers to the
United States, and to prohibit powers to the States; but it simply puts
the state for the government. The powers of the United States are,
indeed, grants or trusts, but from God through the law of nature, and
are grants, trusts, or powers always conceded to every nation or
sovereign people. But none of them are grants from the convention.
The powers the convention grants or concedes to the United States are
powers granted or conceded by the United States to the General
government it assembled to organize and establish, which, as it extends
over the whole population and territory of the Union, and, as the
interests it is charged with relate to all the States in common, or to
the people as a whole, is with no great impropriety called the
government of the United States, in contradistinction from the State
governments, which have each only a local jurisdiction. But the more
exact term is, for the one, the general government, and for the others,
particular governments, as having charge only of the particular
interests of the State; and the two toget