The acceptance was made “_in behalf of the people of Virginia_”; the condition was, “that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from _the people of the United States_ may be resumed _by them_, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression,” and that “among other essential rights the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States.” It cannot be disputed that the convention, by this acceptance, understood and declared that there was thence but one nation; they accept the government in behalf of the people of Virginia; they acknowledge that the powers are derived from “the people of the United States”; and add, if the government be perverted to the injury and oppression of the _people_ of the _United States, they, the people of the United States_, may resume the granted powers, not the people of Virginia or the State of Virginia. If the convention understood that they were making a _compact between States_ that were to retain sovereignty, or the right to withdraw, it certainly would have said: if the United States Government be perverted to the injury of the States, then the State or sovereign State of Virginia or the people of the State could resume the powers granted by her. Clinton is one of the four persons whom Mr. Lodge cites as of the opinion that the Union was a dissoluble, precarious, and temporary affair. The letter of Madison to Hamilton--we have before mentioned--in relation to the perpetuity of the Union and that there could be no conditional acceptance, is well known to constitutional writers and historians, and regarded as of the highest authority; but the more emphatic and decisive declaration of the convention of New York, in its circular-letter to the governors of the different States, signed by Clinton, its President, and _ordered unanimously_, seems to have escaped all notice. In that letter he and they state to the governor of each State the ratification of the Constitution by New York and her recommendation of certain amendments. He and they add, none of these amendments originated in local views. “Our attachment to our sister States, and the confidence we repose in them, cannot be more forcibly demonstrated than by acceding to a government which many of us think very imperfect, and devolving the power of determining whether that government shall be rendered _perpetual in its present form_ or altered agreeably to our wishes and a minority of the States with whom we unite.”[56] [56] Circular-letter from the convention of New York to the governors of the several States of the Union. Elliot’s _Debates_, vol. ii., pages 413, 414.