Appendix

0:00Appendix Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed nor agreed to by anybody as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody, and is, moreover, such a one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they might be forced to do so at the point of a bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning as a contract is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that in his opinion the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be, but that by false interpretations and naked usurpations the government has been made in practice a very widely and almost wholly different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize.

0:49He has heretofore written much and could write much more to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing or another, this much is certain, that it is either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.