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A SHORT CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

OF THE UNITED STATES

"The people, then, erected this government. They gave it a constitution, and in that constitution they have enumerated the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a limited government. They have defined its authority. They have restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted, and all others, they declare, are reserved to the states, or the people. But they have not stopped here. If they had they would have accomplished but half their work. No definition can be so clear as to avoid the possibility of doubt; no limitation so precise as to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, where it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With whom do they repose this ultimate right of deciding the powers of the government? They have settled all this in the fullest manner. They have left it with the government itself, in its appropriate branches. The very chief end, the main design, for which the whole constitution was framed and adopted, was to establish a government that should not be obliged to act through state agency, or depend on state opinion or state discretion."

WEBSTER, Reply to Hayne, January 26, 1830.

A SHORT

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

OF THE

UNITED STATES

BY

FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE, A. M., PH.D.
Author of

“A (State) Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850,"
"The Constitutional History of the United States, 1765-1895,"
"The Government of the People of the United States,"
etc., etc., etc.

"Those commonwealths have been ever the most durable and
perpetual which have often reformed and recomposed themselves
according to their first institution and ordinance."

JOHN PYM.

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

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