If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities.
If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
And it proves, in the last place, that liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.
The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union.
But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.