As respects the origin of the Constitution, we will therefore merely remark, without enlarging on the subject, that we agree with the Vice-President in the opinion that it derives its authority from the States acting as distinct communities, and not from the aggregate mass of the people of the United States. The latter theory receives some countenance from the opening words of the preamble:--_We the people of the United States_;--but is obviously inconsistent with the facts attending the formation and adoption of the Constitution. Throughout the whole proceedings, the States appeared as distinct communities. Those States, which did not at first approve the Constitution, considered themselves and were considered by the other States as at liberty to remain without the pale, and actually did so remain for some years. This could not have happened if all the States had previously constituted one people, that is, one body politic. In that case the decision of the body, in whatever form it might have been collected, must have been obligatory upon all the members. Indeed, the preceding instrument of Union, commonly called the Old Confederation, expressly recognises the sovereignty and independence of the States, and describes the Union as a league. The Congress which assembled under this Confederation was not a General Government, but a meeting of delegates or ambassadors, in which each State had an equal vote, and which merely recommended to the States the adoption of certain measures, which being adopted by them and in that case only, obtained the character and force of _laws_. It is obviously impossible to reconcile this condition of things with the theory, that the States, at the period immediately preceding the adoption of the Constitution, constituted one people. We find accordingly, that President J. Q. Adams, who, in his late Fourth of July Oration, professes the doctrine that the acts of Union which preceded the declaration of Independence combined the States into one people, and that they never existed as separate sovereignties, treats the old Confederation as a temporary departure from the true political system of the country. In other words, he admits that the character of it is inconsistent with his theory. But this Confederation, whatever may be thought of its value, undoubtedly determined for the time being the _actual_ relation of the parties to it. There is reason to suppose, from the tenor of another late publication by Mr. Adams, that he considers the union of Great Britain and Ireland as a departure from the true political system of those countries; but he would probably not think of maintaining, as a consequence of that opinion, that Ireland is at this moment an independent State. On our view of the subject, therefore, the States, from the period of the Declaration of Independence to that of the establishment of the Constitution, existed, in form at least, as distinct communities, independent of each other, and, though