Good one...thanks.
Quite Welcome! :-)
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In 1803, St. George Tucker wrote "View of the Constitution of the United States," a long essay attached to a Philadelphia publication of Blackstone's Commentaries meant to be used in the new nation.
Since Blackstone was based on a monarchy, Tucker's commentary looked at the role and rule of law in a constitutional republic. It was, thus, as historian Clyde N. Wilson writes in a forward to Tucker's work, "the first extended systematic commentary on the Constitution after it had been ratified by the people of the several states and amended by the Bill of Rights."
(Tucker:)
"The federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations, and with each other. Their submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions, as such, in the most unlimited extent."