Via 
789
"The States united to maintain the independence of each, not the
sovereignty or supreme power of the General Government, that being
merely the agent of the States."
---Extracts from a Speech on the
Question of admitting Missouri into the Union. Delivered in Congress,
the seventh of February, 1820, by Louis M'Lane, Representative from the
State of Delaware.
"This Union, as I shall presently show, is
nothing more than a compact between the States which compose it, and the
General Government.
"The fundamental principle of this, and of
every other republican government, is, that the sovereign power resides,
and is inherent in the people, and not in the government. The
sovereign power is the right of the people to unite together for objects
of their mutual safety and advantage, and to establish a public
authority to order and direct what is to be done by each in relation to
the end of the association. Upon the principle of our Government, all
the sovereignty is in the people; they are the fountain whence it flows
and the General Government has no more power than what the people have
delegated to it for federal purposes. In the establishment of public
authority, a greater or less portion of power may be delegated by the
people, by voluntary engagements; but whatever may be the power
delegated, the sovereignty is not impaired, since it was by their will,
and may be recalled or modified by the same will, when the ends and
objects of their association require it.
"All governments are
instituted for the protection of this right in the people. Before the
formation of the Union, the people of each State were sovereign and
independent; they had exercised their sovereignty in the formation of
State constitutions and governments; they not only retained all power
not given to those governments by their constitutions, but they
possessed the right of altering and changing their constitutions at
will. In virtue of this sovereign power, the people of the old States
consented to form a compact of Union, for their mutual safety and
equality of rights, and they consented to vest in the Government of the
Union certain powers; the better to guarantee to the people the
enjoyment of the remainder. The powers of the General Government are
therefore limited; and all the power not delegated remains with the
States, as far as their constitutions give it, and with the people. In
all other respects, the States and the people are as completely
sovereign as they were before the Union.
"The powers of the
General Government are purely federal; they are neither national nor
municipal; the rights of the people in their State Governments are both
national and municipal. The jurisdiction of the Federal Government
extends to the connections, intercourse, and commerce of the republic
with foreign States and Governments, and with each other as sovereign
independent States. But the administration of their local concerns, the
regulation of their domestic relations, the rights of property,
together with the whole routine of municipal regulations, belong to the
States and the people."
