Two writers in the Edinburgh Review, October, 1861, and in the Quarterly Review, January, 1862, have both fallen into Mr. Spence's error. The former in order to prove his position that the Union has never had the power of a National Government supreme over the People, and after denying that its Constitution was ordained and established by a power superior to the States in their corporate capacity - quotes some words of Madison from the 39th number of the Federalist explaining the mode of ratification, and supposes they applied to the final result. The ratification was undoubtedly Federal; the combined result was National. But, in the former, the appeal was not made to the legislatures of the States, but to the people in the States, who were sovereign alike over their separate constitutions, and over that one which, when ratified by all, would be supreme over all within its prescribed limits. This explanation should never be lost sight of in our study of the American Constitution.

Our author has, indeed, committed several errors in this part of his inquiry. His great difficulty seems to be how a consolidated State can be a Union. "Union without plurality is a contradiction of ideas." But are we not ourselves citizens of a Union, -a union of States once sovereign and independent, still governed by their own laws, but which now form a united kingdom and a consolidated State? The phrase we are now discussing can have no bearing, he thinks, on the question, unless it indicate a single community, -a "consolidated

State."1 But no one has ever contended that the Federal Republic is a "consolidated State," but only a consolidated Union; and this designation was given to it by the General Convention itself, and repeated by all the framers of the Constitution.

Again, Mr. Spence supposes that the inequality of the suffrage existing in the several States is one of the proofs that the Republic is not a single People or State. "Were it founded in fact," says he, "the first result, under a republican form of government, would be uniformity of suffrage. The Constitution leaves it to each State to ordain what suffrage it may please. One State may have the most aristocratic, and another the most democratic, of electoral constituencies, without the slightest power in the Federal Government to interfere with either." 3

We have already said no one has ever spoken of the Republic as a single State. But will Mr. Spence say that the inequality of suffrage in our own country much greater before the Reform Bill than now is destructive of our political unity? And why must a Federal Union, with a republican form of government, necessarily have a uniformity of suffrage any more than a monarchy? Surely, a Constitution formed by the people can prescribe its own terms. Besides, it is not true that "the Constitution leaves it to each State to ordain what suffrage it may please." The words are, "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States; and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature." 1

The American Republic is not a simple Republic: it is a Republic of United States. The people of each State are (within the limits of a republican form of government). sovereign, as regards their own constitution; and whatever suffrage they consider most

desirable for their own most numerous branch of legislature, that, the Constitution ordains for the corresponding branch of the National Legislature; while the Senate-also an elective body-must be chosen by the Senate and representatives of the State combined. How these arrangements prevent the inhabitants of all the States forming, for special purposes, and in all their relations to foreign Powers, one single People, we are at a loss to conceive.