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New States have since, from time to time,
formed constitutions, either regularly in pursuance of
enabling acts passed by Congress, or irregularly by the
spontaneous action of the people, or under the direction of the legislative or executive authority of the
Territory to which the State succeeded. Where
irregularities existed, they must be regarded as having
been cured by the subsequent admission of the State into
the Union by Congress; and there were not wanting in the
case of some States plausible reasons for insisting that
such admission had become a matter of right, and that
the necessity for an enabling act by Congress was
dispensed with by the previous stipulations of the
national government in acquiring the territory from
which such States were formed.1 Some of these
constitutions pointed out the mode for their own
modification; others were silent on that subject; but it
has been assumed that in such cases the power to
originate proceedings for that purpose rested with the
legislature of the State, as the department must nearly
representing its general sovereignty; and this is
doubtless the correct view to take of this subject.2
The theory of our
political system is that the ultimate sovereignty is
in the people, from whom springs all legitimate
authority.3 The people of the Union
created a national constitution, and conferred upon it
powers of sovereignty over certain subjects, and the
people of each State created a State government, to
exercise the remaining powers of sovereignty so far as
they were disposed to allow them to be exercised at all.
By the constitution which they establish, they not only
tie up the hands of their official agencies, but their
own hands as well; and neither the officers of the
State, nor the whole people as an aggregate body, are at
liberty to take action in opposition to this fundamental
law. But in… |
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