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Show -11- example of what was not wanted on this continent*^5 After four months of de- bate the delegates emerged from the convention with a compromise document, which, within three years following, was adopted by all as the constitution of the United States % By it a federal government was created and superimposed upon the governments of the several States. Obviously sovereign rights in American waters prior to the effective date of the new constitution were fixed by international law and treaties between the States-the most important of which have been discussed heretofore. The Articles of Confederation contained nothing to indicate otherwise. The adoption of the federal constitution brought about a new distribution of sovereignty which correspondingly altered the existing status of water rights, but left "the same otherwise unchanged. An analysis of this innovation logically precedes further study of the subject here under consideration; and this, in turn, calls for a rather general examination of the constitutional rearrangement of sovereignty within which all state and federal rights are enfolded. Since the constitution has remained the same in respect to the waters of the nation from the date of its adoption, it will not be out of place here to scrutinize tha-fc great document in the light of subsequent interpretation which, however long delayed, cannot be said to have added or taken away any constitutional right .^ In the Yfriting of the constitution the delegates from the States evidently had been extremely careful to safeguard their undelegated sovereignty* Under the new constitution both the President and the Senate must be chosen by the sovereign States, and-not by the people of the United States as a whole» To the President and Senate so chosen is committed the sole and ex- clusive power of making treaties with foreign nations; and*of choosing the Justices of the Supreme Court invested with the duty of determining contro- versies between the States. The Congress as a whole is endowed with power t»o regulate commerce between the States and with foreign nations; and negatively In Earding, Essentials in Medieval and Modern History, ~$h<0» "the political condition of the German Empire at the close of the Thirty Years War and just following the Peace of Westphalia (I6I4.8) is described as follows^ "in form there was still an Emperor, imperial Diet, and impjrial court of justice; in fact, everything rested with the separate states, of which (in- cluding the free cities) there were several hundred. They made their own laws, coined money, maintained armies, sent representatives to other courts, and cpuld form foreign alliances, except against the empire or Emperor. All sense of patriotism in Germany was stifled*" With slight revision this description would fit the American States between the close of the war and the adoption of the federal constitution. 0/ "The consitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now. . . « Those things which are within its grants of power, as those grants were understood when made, are still within them,, and those things not within them remain still ex- cluded." South Carolina v. United States, 199 U. S. 1+37, I4U8-I4I+9, 26 Sup. Ct. 110, 111, 50 L. Ed. 261, 26i+ (1905). This is taken as sufficient authority for use in the following pages of language in the present tense, although relating to the federal constitution as of the date of its adoption in the year 1789, |