Studies in Constitutional History (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...for they averred only the right of private State opinion as to infractions of the constitution, and the right, not of one party, but of all the parties to the supposed State compact, to arrest such infractions; and when the many objections from other states to these resolutions showed that all the parties to the supposed compact did not agree to cancel it, the action taken by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia was to protest. Not the Hartford convention, for the remedy it proposed for the evils of which it complained was, to amend the constitution. Nor even the nullification program, for the effect of the attempted nullification by South Carolina of the Federal legislation was like the effect of the Pope's Bull against the Comet; the Federal legislation moved on as before. There was not a precedent for action upon the theory of secession in the facts of our history. Such action ran counter to the continuous and uniform practice and conduct of the government under the constitution. It was wholly revolutionary, if any course of action could be. If there was any adequate justification for the attempted secession of 1861, then the pretended sovereignty of the United States for a period of 72 years was a mere simulacrum, and the history of its continued assumption of that pretended sovereignty, and of its parading before the governments of the earth as a real nation, was a gilded hypocrisy. National Practice Under The Articles Of ConfedEration. But did not the Articles of Confederation, which were in force when the Federal Convention met in 1787, declare that each state retained its sovereignty and independence? And was it not then a congress of ambassadors from sovereigns which met to compose that convention? It is true that that instrument, ...