2. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

ARTICLE IV. THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.[10]

[Footnote 10: Compare Art. IV. with Confed. Art. IV.]

_Section I. State Records._

Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

_Section II. Privileges of Citizens, etc._

1. The citizens of each State shall be ent.i.tled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.

3. No person held to service or labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.[11]

[Footnote 11: This clause has been cancelled by Amendment XIII., which abolishes slavery.]

_Section III. New States and Territories._[12]

[Footnote 12: Compare section iii. with Confed. Art. XI.]

1. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

2. The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Const.i.tution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or of any particular State.

_Section IV. Guarantee to the States._

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence.

ARTICLE V. POWER OF AMENDMENT.[13]

[Footnote 13: Compare Art. V. with Confed. Art. XIII.]

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Const.i.tution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Const.i.tution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress, provided that no amendments which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

ARTICLE VI. PUBLIC DEBT, SUPREMACY OF THE CONSt.i.tUTION, OATH OF OFFICE, RELIGIOUS TEST.

1. All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Const.i.tution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Const.i.tution as under the confederation.[14]

[Footnote 14: Compare clause I with Confed. Art. XII.]

2. This Const.i.tution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Const.i.tution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

3. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Const.i.tution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.[15]

[Footnote 15: Compare clauses 2 and 3 with Confed. Art. XIII. and addendum, "And whereas," etc.]

ARTICLE VII. RATIFICATION OF THE CONSt.i.tUTION.

The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Const.i.tution between the States so ratifying the same.

Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present,[16] the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth. In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names.

[Footnote 16: Rhode Island sent no delegates to the Federal Convention.]

George Washington, President, and Deputy from VIRGINIA.

NEW HAMPSHIRE--John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman.

Ma.s.sACHUSETTS--Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King.

CONNECTICUT--William Samuel Johnson, Roger Sherman.

NEW YORK--Alexander Hamilton.

NEW JERSEY--William Livingston, David Brearly, William Patterson, Jonathan Dayton.

PENNSYLVANIA--Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Mifflin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris.

DELAWARE--George Read, Gunning Bedford, Jr., John d.i.c.kinson, Richard Ba.s.sett, Jacob Broom.

MARYLAND--James McHenry, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Daniel Carroll.

VIRGINIA--John Blair, James Madison, Jr.

NORTH CAROLINA--William Blount, Richard Dobbs Spaight, Hugh Williamson.

SOUTH CAROLINA--John Rutledge, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Charles Pinckney, Pierce Butler.

GEORGIA--William Few, Abraham Baldwin.

Attest: William Jackson, Secretary.

AMENDMENTS.[17]

ARTICLE I.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to a.s.semble, and to pet.i.tion the government for a redress of grievances.

[Footnote 17: Amendments I. to X. were proposed by Congress, Sept. 25, 1789, and declared in force Dec. 15, 1791.]

ARTICLE II.

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

ARTICLE III.