shall go down to advert to all the instances of it, and I shall only refer to the most prominent, and especially to the establishment of the Constitution under which you sit.  The old Congress, upon the suggestion of the delegates who assembled at Annapolis in May, 1786, recommended to the States that they should send delegates to a convention to be holden at Philadelphia to form a Constitution.  No article of the old Confederation gave them power to do this; but they did it, and the States did appoint delegates, who assembled at Philadelphia, and formed the Constitution.  It was communicated to the old Congress, and that body recommended to the States to make provision for calling the people together to act upon its adoption.  Was not that exactly the case of passing a law to ascertain the will of the people in a new exigency?  And this method was adopted without opposition, nobody suggesting that there could be any other mode of ascertaining the will of the people.

My learned friend went through the constitutions of several of the States.  It is enough to say, that, of the old thirteen States, the constitutions, with but one exception, contained no provision for their own amendment.  In New Hampshire there was a provision for taking the sense of the people once in seven years.  Yet there is hardly one that has not altered its constitution, and it has been done by conventions called by the legislature, as an ordinary exercise of legislative power.  Now what State ever altered its constitution in any other mode?  What alteration has ever been brought in, put in, forced in, or got in anyhow, by resolutions of mass meetings, and then by applying force?  In what State has an assembly, calling itself the people, convened without law, without authority, without qualifications, without certain officers, with no oaths, securities, or sanctions of any kind, met and made a constitution, and called it the constitution of the STATE?  There must be some authentic mode of ascertaining the will of the people, else all is anarchy.  It resolves itself into the law of the strongest, or, what is the same thing, of the most numerous for the moment, and all constitutions and all legislative rights are prostrated and disregarded.

But my learned adversary says, that, if we maintain that the people (for he speaks in the name and on behalf of the people, to which I do not object) cannot commence changes in their government but by some previous act of legislation, and if the legislature will not grant such an act, we do in fact follow the example of the Holy Alliance, “the doctors of Laybach,” where the assembled sovereigns said that all changes of government must proceed from sovereigns; and it is said that we mark out the same rule for the people of Rhode Island.