Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Memorial of Initiative and Referendum League of America Relative to a National Initiative and Referendum
Express authority in the Federal Constitution for instructions to Members of Congress is the ninth amendment, as follows: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Among the rights which the people thus retained is the right to in struct. This is evidenced by the fact that at the time this amendment was adopted the bill of rights in four of the State constitutions, namely, of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, expressly reserved the right to instruct, and in all the other States the right was actually exercised. This is admitted in the debates in the First Congress, August 15, 1789. James Madison objected to stating in the Federal Constitution that the people's right to assemble to instruct representatives should not be infringed, be cause to thus admit the right to instruct would obligate us, he said, to run the risk of losing the whole system. In other words the Federalists aimed to suppress the right to instruct, and Madison and his fellow-federalists succeeded in defeating the amendment then under discussion, namely, that the right to instruct should be ex pressly stated in the bill of rights, but the people's interests were secured in the ninth amendment, above quoted.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
