“ [122] monarchy was abruptly severed, the word ‘sovereign’ had no meaning for us.”1 If this be true, “the men of those days” had a very extraordinary way of expressing their conviction that the word “had no meaning for us.” We have seen that, in the very front of their Articles of Confederation, they set forth the conspicuous declaration that each state retained “its sovereignty, freedom, and independence.” Massachusetts—the state, I believe, of Motley's nativity and citizenship—in her original constitution, drawn up by “men of those days,” made this declaration:
The people inhabiting the territory formerly called the Province of Massachusetts Bay do hereby solemnly and mutually agree with each other to form themselves into a free, sovereign, and independent body politic, or State, by the name of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts.New Hampshire, in her constitution, as revised in 1792, had identically the same declaration, except as regards the name of the state and the word “state” instead of “commonwealth.” Madison, one of the most distinguished of the men of that day and of the advocates of the Constitution, in a speech already once referred to, in the Virginia convention of 1788, explained that “We, the people,” who were to establish the Constitution, were the people of “thirteen sovereignties.”2 In the Federalist he repeatedly employs the term—as, for example, when he says: “Do they [the fundamental principles of the Confederation] require that, in the establishment of the Constitution, the States should be regarded as distinct and independent sovereigns? They are so regarded by the Constitution proposed.”3 Alexander Hamilton—another contemporary authority, no less illustrious—says, in the Federalist:
It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty, not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent. This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union.4In the same paragraph he uses these terms, “sovereign” and “sovereignty,” repeatedly—always with reference to the states, respectively and severally. Benjamin Franklin advocated equality of suffrage in the Senate as a means of securing “the sovereignties of the individual States.”5 James
