Excerpt from The Influence of the Proprietors in Founding the State of New Jersey "We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Constitution." These words are the ordaining clause of the present constitution of New Jersey, which was adopted in 1844. They are not the introduction to the terms of an agreement; they begin no compact. They are a creative fiat; they call into being a law of laws for the commonwealth; they institute a government. But the people who thus ordain, who exercise this highest original faculty, are not themselves the product of a single creative act. The self-government here in full activity, the only real counterpart of the people, was a growth, to whose perfecting many agencies contributed. The nature of an act done by an absolute monarch and that of the ordaining act of a self-ruling community, are nowhere more clearly contrasted than in the feelings of interest with which we regard the two. The former excites no curiosity as to the origin of its producing power.

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