James Madison

“ It is indeed inseparable from the nature of a compact, that there is as much right on one side to expound it & to insist on its fulfilment according to that exposition, as there is on the other so to expound it as to furnish a release from it ”

“ If sovereignty cannot be thus divided, the Political System of the United States is a chimaera, mocking the vain pretensions of human wisdom. If it can be so divided, the system ought to have a fair opportunity of fulfilling the wishes & expectations which cling to the experiment.
Nothing can be more clear than that the Constitution of the U. S. has created a Government, in as strict a sense of the term, as the Governments of the States created by their respective Constitutions. The Federal Govt. ”

“ The task of combating such unhappy aberrations belongs to other hands. A man whose years have but reached the canonical three-score-&-ten (and mine are much beyond the number) should distrust himself, whether distrusted by his friends or not, and should never forget that his arguments, whatever they may be will be answered by allusions to the date of his birth. ”

“ The case of individuals expatriating themselves, that is leaving their country in its territorial as well as its social & political sense, may well be deemed a reasonable privilege, or rather as a right impliedly reserved. ”

“ The original compact is the one implied or presumed, but nowhere reduced to writing, by which a people agree to form one society. The next is a compact, here for the first time reduced to writing, by which the people in their social state agree to a Govt. over them. These two compacts may be considered as blended in the Constitution of the U. S., which recognises a union or society of States, and makes it the basis of the Govt. ”