Can anything be more explicit that every one, everywhere, at that time understood the Union was perpetual, than this unanimous address of the convention of New York saying so to all the other States, and the submissive request that they would amend the Constitution in accordance with their wishes? The conventions of Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York passed resolutions recommending what they considered important necessary amendments to the Constitution. These resolutions and the recommendations of other States were considered in the first Congress, and ten articles, commonly called the Bill of Rights, were passed, and duly ratified by the legislatures of the States. These articles are safeguards against the feared tyrannical grants that had been given, and are all restrictive of the powers of the United States over its citizens, not of its powers over States. They are: that the people should have the right of petition; and “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” This shows how deep and serious the States believed the danger to be from the great powers of the General Government with a standing army and navy. Other amendments were, that no law should be passed abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of trial by jury in suits at common law where the amount involved exceeds twenty dollars; that there should be no established religion, and matters of that kind. None of these ten amendments give any powers to State governments. The final clause reserves all the powers not granted, “to the _States_ respectively, or to the _people_,” not to the States and their people, or the people of the respective States; but to the people, putting the people as a whole. Great stress has been laid by Calhoun and his followers on this clause, as giving power to the States. As the United States Government’s sovereignty is undoubtedly limited to the express grants of the Constitution, the powers not granted are in the States or people. There was no need of any reservation, except to allay the fears of those who erroneously believed that the Constitution gave unlimited power to the Union. We have seen that in the discussions in the constitutional conventions it was denied that any separate State ever had or exercised sovereign powers. Judge Story, whose authority is as great as that of any legal writer, in his commentaries on the Constitution maintains this doctrine. Many of our earlier historians concur in this.