there was a great difference between construing an old compact and making a new one.[1] Surely a smaller number should be allowed to construe an agreement than was required to make an entirely new one. If three-fourths of the contracting parties must concur in every construction of their compact, would it not, in all probability, remain forever a dead letter? Would it ever be construed at all? Could so large a number agree in drawing any power from it when their interests clashed?
The friends of nullification might say what they pleased, but the exercise of this veto power by the states, with the right of an appeal to a federal convention, was nothing more nor less than taking all power out of the hands of the majority and putting it into those of the minority. It was in fact the establishment of an aristocracy of the very worst kind. The majority, indeed almost three-fourths of the people, would be governed by one-fourth. If this, the Union men felt, were consistent with the true principles of a republican government, if it were not the commencement
- ↑ The Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution was merely a construing of the old compact, an interpretative dictate as to its construction.
