But when it was proposed to reverse this principle, and to create a government, external to the governments of the States, clothed with authority to exact obedience from the individual inhabitants of the States, and to act upon them directly, the question might well arise, whether the State governments were competent to cede such an authority over their constituents, and whether it could be granted by anybody but the people themselves. It might, it is true, be said, that their constitutions made the governments of the States the depositaries of the sovereignty and political powers of the people inhabiting those States. But if this was true, in a general sense, for the purpose of exercising the political powers of the people, it was not true, in any sense, for the purpose of granting away those powers to other agents. The latter could only be done by those who had constituted the first class of agents, and who were able to say that certain portions of the authority with which they had been clothed should be withdrawn, and be revested in another class. Undoubtedly it would have been possible to have given the Constitution of the United States a theoretical adoption by the people of the States, by committing its acceptance to the State legislatures, relying on the acquiescence of the people in their acts. But there were two objections to this course. The one was, that the legislatures were believed less likely than the people to favor the establishment of such a government as that now proposed. The other was, that the kind of legal fiction by which the presumed assent of the people must be reached, in this mode, would leave room for doubts and disputes as to the real basis and authority of the government, which ought, if possible, to be avoided.