A constitution “is not the beginning of a community, nor the origin of private rights; it is not the fountain of law, nor the incipient state of government; it is not the cause, but the consequence, of personal and political freedom; it grants no rights to the people, but, is the creature of their power, — the instrument of their convenience.
Designed for their protection in the enjoyment of the rights and powers which the people possessed before the constitution was made. The constitution is merely the framework for the political government, and is necessarily based upon the pre-existing condition of laws, rights, habits, and modes of thought of the people. There is nothing primitive in it; it is all derived from a known source. It presupposes an organized society, law, order, property, personal freedom, a love of political liberty, and enough of cultivated intelligence to know how to guard it against the encroachments of tyranny.