In this inquiry, the student of political history should never fail to observe, that the great difficulty of the case, which made it so complex and embarrassing, arose from the separate, sovereign, and independent existence of the States. The formation of new constitutions, in countries not thus divided, involves only the adaptation of new institutions and forms to the genius, the laws, and the habits of the people. The monarchy of France has, in our day, been first remodelled, and afterwards swept from the face of Europe, to be followed by a republican constitution, which has in its turn been crushed and superseded. But France is a country that has long been subjected to as complete and powerful a system of centralization as has existed anywhere since the most energetic period of the Roman empire; and whether its institutions of government have or have not needed to be changed, as they have been from time to time, those changes have been made in a country in which an entire political unity has greatly facilitated the operation. In the United States, on the contrary, a federal government was to be created; and it was to be created for thirteen distinct communities;--a government that should not destroy the political sovereignties of the States, and should yet introduce a new sovereignty, formed by means of powers, whose surrender by the States, instead of weakening their present strength, would rather develop and increase it. This peculiar difficulty may be constantly traced, amidst all the embarrassments of the period in which the fundamental idea of the Constitution was at length evolved.