Note 42 — Dickinson, John. Letters of Fabius on the Federal Constitution.

“We have now traced Man from a natural individual to a member of society——Civil power, properly considered as such is made up of the aggregate of that class of the natural rights, which become defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his purpose; but when collected into a focus, becomes competent to the purpose of every one.——Let us now apply those principles to government.——

“Individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other, to produce a government; and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

“A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact.—It has not an ideal but a real existence, and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government; and a government is only the creature of a constitution.—A constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government. It is the body of elements to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organized, the powers it shall have, the mode of election, the duration of parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called, the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and, in fine, every thing that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound.”—“Rights of Man,” page 35, 36.

“What is a constitution? it is the form of government, delineated by the mighty hand of the people, in which certain first principles or fundamental laws are established. The constitution is certain and fixed; it contains the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land; it is paramount to the power of the legislature, and can be revoked or altered only by the authority that made it.—What are legislatures? creatures of the constitution, they owe their existence to the constitution—they derive their powers from the constitution.—It is their commission, and therefore all their acts must be conformable to it, or else void. The constitution is the work or will of the people themselves, in their original, sovereign, and unlimited capacity. Law is the work or will of the legislature in their derivative capacity.”

Judge Patterson’s charge to the Jury in the Wioming case of Vanhorne’s lessee against Dorrance; tried at the circuit-court for the United States, held at Philadelphia, April term, 1795.