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[20] and right which had not been delegated in the Constitution. This was modified and adopted in regular constitutional form and is known as the Ninth article. All the suggestions were in the nature of limitations and restrictions, showing distrust of centralization and a determined purpose to preserve from invasion or impairment the rights of the States. It was felt that time and experience would show the wisdom of changes and of adaptations to new environments, and thus it was wisely provided that amendments might be made but should be valid only ‘when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof.’ As the States only could make a constitution, so three-fourths of them, as separate political corporations, could amend the instrument. The favorite theory of many, that the States were merged into the government of the Union, into an aggregated unit, is an assumption totally irreconcilable with the fact that this same people can neither alter nor amend their government. When that essential function has to be performed, it is indispensable to summon into new life and activity those very State sovereignties, which, by the supposition, lost their individual power and vitality by the very act creating the instrument which they are required to amend. Had the Constitution originated from the people inhabiting the territories of the whole Union, its amendment would have remained to them, as the amendment of a State constitution belongs to the people of a State. But as such a body of associated people is a myth, a figment of the brain, the power of amendment is left in the hands of the existing bodies politic, the creators of the Constitution and of the Union. The positive supervising power bestowed by the compact upon the State governments and the people over the whole Federal government flatly contradicts the idea that the same compact designed constructively
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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