"It is fortunate when disputed theories can be decided by undisputed facts, and here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as embodied into the several States who were parties to it, and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority and by the same process, have converted the confederacy into a mere league or treaty, or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have embodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation, or sovereignty; or, as they did, by a mixed form, make them one people, nation, or sovereignty for certain purposes, and not so for others. "The Constitution of the United States, being established by a competent authority, by that of the sovereign people of the several States who were parties to it, it remains only to inquire what the Constitution is; and here it speaks for itself. It organizes a government into the usual legislative, executive, and judiciary departments; invests it with specified powers, leaving others to the parties to the Constitution. It makes the government like other governments to operate directly on the people; places at its command the needful physical means of executing its powers; and finally proclaims its supremacy, and that of the laws made in pursuance of it, over the constitutions and laws of the States, the powers of the government being exercised, as in other elective and responsible governments, under the control of its constituents, the people and the legislatures of the States, and subject to the revolutionary rights of the people, in extreme cases. "Such is the Constitution of the United States _de jure_ and _de facto_, and the name, whatever it be, that may be given to it can make it nothing more or less than what it is. "Pardon this hasty effusion, which, whether precisely according or not with your ideas, presents, I am aware, none that will be new to you. "With great esteem and cordial salutations, "JAMES MADISON." To "MR. WEBSTER." It may be observed, in reference to the closing remark in the above important letter, that the view which it presents of the nature of the government established by the Constitution is precisely that taken by Mr. Webster in the various speeches in which the subject is discussed by him.