In practice, the constitution has been an utter fraud from the beginning. Professing to have been ‘ordained and established’ by we, the people of the United States, it has never been submitted to them, as individuals, for their voluntary acceptance… very few of them have ever read, or even seen it; or ever will read or see it. Of its legal meaning (if it can be said to have any) they really know nothing; and never did. Nor ever will know anything. — Lysander Spooner, In a letter to Thomas F. Bayard