103 Since the alliance of the original thirteen States, thirty-five have been admitted into the Union by acts of Congress either directing the people to select delegates and enact a Constitution or accepting a Constitution already made by the people. An illustration of the former method of procedure is offered in 25 U. S. St. at L. 676 c 180, providing for the admission of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington into the Union, and of the latter in 26 U. S. St. at L. 215 c 656; 222 c 664, providing for the admission of Idaho and Wyoming. “Of these instruments (State Constitutions), therefore, no less than of the Constitutions of the thirteen original States, we may say that although subsequent in date to the Federal Constitution, they are, so far as each state is concerned de jure prior to it. Their authority over their own citizens is nowise derived from it.”—Bryce’s _American Commonwealth_ (Third Edition), Vol. I, p. 431. 104 “A constitution is an instrument of government, made and adopted by the people for practical purposes, connected with the common business and wants of human life. For this reason pre-eminently every word in it should be expounded in its plain, obvious and common sense.”—Per Allen J., in Peo v. New York, Cent. R. Co., 24 N. Y. 485, 486. 105 Legislatures cannot change Constitutions. “I consider the people of this country as the only sovereign power. I consider the legislature as not sovereign, but subordinate; they are subordinate to the great constitutional charter, which the people have established as a fundamental law and which alone has given existence and authority to the legislature.”—Per Roane, J. in Kanper v. Hawkins, 1 _Va. Cas._ 20, 86. 106 “Some of the state constitutions provide for periodically submitting to the voters the question whether a convention shall be called to revise and amend the constitution. Regardless of whether or not provision is made for periodical resubmission of the question of calling a convention, the constitutions usually provide that the legislature may, of its own volition, submit to a vote of the people the question whether a convention shall be called, and subject to any existing constitutional limitations, may prescribe the time and manner of electing delegates to such convention.”