ng on the present argument, because it is
prescribed by the States united, not severally, and the power to amend
is evidently reserved, not indeed to the General government, but to the
United States; for the ratification by any State or Territory not in
the Union counts for nothing. The States united, can, in the way
prescribed, give more or less power to the General government, and
reserve more or less power to the States individually. The so-called
reserved powers are really reserved to the people of the United States,
who can make such disposition of them as seems to them good.

The conclusion, then, that the General government holds from the States
united, not from the States severally, is not invalidated by the fact
that its constitution was completed only by the ratification of the
States in their individual capacity. The ratification was made
necessary by the will of the people in convention assembled; but the
convention was competent to complete it and put it in force without
that ratification, had it so willed. The general practice under the
American system is for the convention to submit the constitution it has
agreed on to the people, to be accepted or rejected by a plebiscitum;
but such submission, though it may be wise and prudent, is not
necessary. The convention is held to be the convention of the people,
and to be clothed with the full authority of the sovereign people, and
it is in this that it differs from the congress or the legislature. It
is not a congress of delegates or ministers who are obliged to act
under instructions, to report their acts to their respective sovereigns
for approval or rejection; it is itself sovereign, and may do whatever
the people themselves can do. There is no necessity for it to appeal
to a plebiscitum to complete its acts. That the convention, on the
score of prudence, is wise in doing so, nobody questions; but the
convention is always competent, if it chooses, to ordain the
constitution without appeal. The power competent to ordain the
constitution is always competent to change, modify, or amend it. That
amendments to the constitution of the government can be adopted only by
being proposed by a convention of all the States in the Union, or by
being proposed, by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, and
ratified by three-fourths of the States, is simply a conventional
ordinance, which the convention can change at its pleasure. It proves
nothing as it stan