of its power. Was it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? "The doctrine for which the gentleman contends," said Mr. Webster, "leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not only that the general government is the creature of the states, but that it is the creature of each of the states, severally; so that each may assert the power, for itself, of determining whether it acts within the limits of its authority. It is the servant of four-andtwenty masters, of different wills and different purposes, and yet bound to obey all. This absurdity arises from a misconception as to the origin of this government in its true character. It is the people's constitution, the people's government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this constitution shall be the supreme. law. The states are sovereign so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people. So far as the people have given power to the general government, so far the grant is good; and the government holds of the people, and not of the state governments. The general government and the state governments derive their authority from the same source. Neither can, in relation to the other, be called primary; though one is definite and restricted, and the other general and residuary. The national government possesses those powers conferred on it by the people; the rest belongs to the states and the people."

But in erecting this government and giving it a constitution in which they have defined its powers, the people, he said, had done but half their work. No definition could be so clear as to avoid possibility of doubt. Who then should construe this grant of the people? With whom did they repose the ultimate right of deciding on the powers of the govern ment? They had left it with the government itself, in its appropriate branches. Their design was to establish a government that should not be obliged to act through state agency, or depend on state opinion and state discretion. The constitution, and the laws made under it, are declared to be supreme; and it is declared that "the judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the constitution and laws of the United States." These two provisions covered the whole ground. They were the key-stone of the arch. With these it was a constitution; without them, it was a confederacy. In pursuance of these clear and express provisions, congress established, at its very first session, in the judicial act, a mode for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all questions of constitutional power to the final decision of the supreme court. It then became a government; it then had the means of self-protection.

Mr. Hayne again replied to Mr. Webster, and reäffirmed the doctrine of his former speech, on the authority of Mr. Madison's report, "that where resort can be had to no common superior, the parties to the compact must themselves be the rightful judges," &c.; and he denied the doctrine of Mr. Webster, that the federal government had "the power of deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the extent of its own authority." The states in forming the compact, had not surrendered their sovereignty. A compact between two, with a right reserved to one to expound the instrument according to his own pleasure, was no compact at all, but an absolute surrender of the whole subject matter to the arbitrary discretion of the party who was constituted the judge. The states being parties to the compact in their capacity as states, and being sovereign and equal, having no common superior, there could be no tribunal above their authority to decide whether the compact had been violated; and the federal government was bound to acquiesce in the solemn decision of a state thus acting in its sovereign capacity. He went into a long argument attempting to prove that the supreme court had not the power to decide in such cases, and said, if congress should attempt to enforce an unconstitutional law, they would put themselves clearly in the wrong; and the state would have the right to exert its protecting power.

Mr. Webster, in a very brief reply, stated Mr. Hayne's propositions to be: (1.) That the constitution is a compact between the states; (2.) That a compact between two, with authority reserved to one to interpret its terms, would be a surrender to that one of all power whatever; and (3.) As an inference from these propositions, that the general government does not possess the authority to construe its own powers.

"Now, sir," said Mr. W., "who does not see, without exposition or detection, the utter confusion of ideas involved in this so elaborate and systematic argument? The constitution, it is said, is a compact between states: the states, then, and the states only, are parties to the compact. How comes the general government itself a party? Upon the honorable gentleman's hypothesis, the general government is the result of the compact, the creature of the compact, not one of the parties to it. Yet the argument, as he has now stated it, makes the government itself one of its own creators. It makes it a party to that compact to which it owes its own existence. For the purpose of erecting the constitution on the basis of a compact, the gentleman considers the states as parties to that compact; but as soon as his compact is made, then he chooses to consider the general government, which is the offspring of that compact,

not as its offspring, but one of its parties; and so, being a party, has not the power of judging on the terms of compact. Pray, sir, in what school is such reasoning taught?

“ The gentleman says, if there be such a power of final decision in the general government, he asks for the grant of that power. Well, sir, I show him the grant– I turn him to the very words—I show him that the laws of congress are made supreme; and that the judicial power extends, by express words, to the mterpretation of these laws. Instead of answering this, he retreats into the general reflection, that it must result, from the nature of things, that the states being parties, must judge for themselves."

Mr. W. argued farther, that, even supposing the constitution to be a compact between the states, that doctrine was not maintainable; because, first, the general government was not a party to the compact, but a government established by it, and vested by it with the powers of trying and deciding doubtful questions; and, secondly, if the constitution were regarded as a compact, not one state only, but all the states, were parties to it; and one alone could have no right to fix upon it her own peculiar construction. Yet the doctrine was, that Carolina alone might construe and interpret that compact which equally bound all, and gave equal rights to all. But the constitution, he said, was not a compact between state governments; the constitution itself declaring, that it was ordained and established by " the people of the United States." It did not even say that it was established by the people of the several states; but by the people of the United States in the aggregate. The confederation was strictly a compact between the states, as states; but that was found insufficient, and the people, not satisfied with it, had established, not a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between states, but a general government, directly responsible to the people, and divided into branches with prescribed limits of power, and prescribed duties.

Mr. Benton thought the power claimed by Mr. Webster for the supreme court was no less than a despotic power. That court was called supreme in reference to inferior courts—the district and circuit courts--and not in reference to the states of the union. A power to decide on the federal constitutionality of state laws, and to bind the states by the decision, was a power to

the states. Mr. Rowan, of Kentucky, protested against the doctrine of Mr. Webster, which denied that the constitution was a compact formed by the states, but which asserted that it was a government formed by the people, and for the very purpose, among others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on state sovereignties. And the idea that the people had conferred upon the supreme court such a power, was a fallacy. He believed these doctrines struck at the root of all our free institutions, and led directly to a consolidation of the government. They had been inferred from the tenor of the first message of the late president Adams

to congress. Now, the explicit avowal of them by the honorable senator removed all doubt from the subject. We could no longer doubt as to the political faith of Mr. Adams. His most zealous and distinguished apostle had avowed it. “ The two parties," said Mr. R., “are now clearly distinguishable by their opposite political tenets; the one headed by our illustrious chief magistrate, who is the friend and advocate of the rights of the states ; the other party is now headed by the senator from Massachusetts.” Mr. R. undertook, by a long and able argument, to disprove these doctrines, and to show that the union had not been formed by the people of the United States in the aggregate, but in the capacity of states; and the union was one of state sovereignties. The only security to the liberties of the people was in the protecting power of the sovereignty of their respective states; and when that sovereignty was subjected to the will of the supreme court, the people were subjected to the same tribunal; and after all their vigilance and caution, in guarding against oppression from their rulers, they were, by this doctrine, to be subjected to the rule of a judicial aristocracy, whose tenure of power was for life, and irresponsible. He held that a state being sovereign, and owing allegiance to no higher power, it could not, by resisting a law of congress, commit treason or rebellion.

After having spoken of the means of peaceable resistance, on the part of a state to an unconstitutional law, by nullifying resolutions, and other expressions of the public will, as having a rebuking effect of sufficient force to secure redress, he says: “But if these results should not follow, you ask me, what next ? Must the state forbear to resist the aggression upon her sovereignty, and submit to be shorn of it altogether? I answer, no, sir, no; that she must maintain her sovereignty by every means within her power. She is good for nothing, even worse than good for nothing, without it. This, you will tell me, must lead to civil war—to war between the general government and the resisting itate. I answer, not at all, unless the general government shall choose o consecrate its usurpations by the blood of those it shall have ttempted to oppress. And if the states shall be led, by apprehen ons of that kind, to submit to encroachments upon their sovereignties, ey will most certainly not remain sovereign long. Fear is a bad inselor, of even an individual ; it should never be consulted by a ereign state.” Several questions here naturally suggest themselves to the reader. The ginia and Kentucky resolutions, among whose authors and exponents · Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, were in this debate adduced as ority for nullification, and that, too, by force, if necessary. If, as resolutions declare, a state, in case of a supposed unconstitutional

a

act of congress, bas" a right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress;" and if redress can not be had in any other way, it may be asked, Do these resolutions authorize a forcible resistance ? Was nullification a distinctive doctrine of the Jackson party ? Concerning the former question it may be said, that a strict construction of those resolutions would seem to justify a resort to force to obtain redress. Such construction, however, is at the present day rejected by a majority of those who approve the resolutions. Force, in the last resort, was plainly asserted by Messrs. Hayne and Rowan to be a constitutional mode of resistance; and we are not aware that any administration senator who succeeded them in the debate, except Mr. Livingston, admitted the existence of any authority in the general government to bind a state by its decision. Nor are we aware that any senator disclaimed the avowal of Mr. Rowan, that these were the distinctive doctrines of the administration party. This avowal, and the tacit consent which it received in the senate, and the prompt response to it of leading men and presses of the administration party, who hailed the views of state rights expressed by Mr. Hayne as “the true democratic doctrine," for the defense of which the democrats of the union owed him a debt of gratitude;" indicated a recognition of them as party

a doctrines.

It is true, however, that, although the theory of Mr. Hayne seems to have been maintained by nearly all the administration senators who argued this point, and the existence of a power in the general government to decide upon the binding force of a law of congress to have been denied; all of them did not assert the right of violent resistance; as will appear from the speeches of those who followed in debate.

Mr. Grundy denied the right of the legislature of a state to declare the nullity of a law, and to prevent its execution; but gave it to a convention chosen by the people.

Mr. Woodbury did not coincide in the assertion of a constitutional right of preventing the execution of a law believed to be unconstitutional; the people were supreme, and could and would, in their omnipotence, and for sufficient cause, “always apply a most sovereign remedy," -evidently meaning force—if other means of redress should fail.

Mr. Livingston, an administration senator, in his views of the nature of the constitution, and of the powers and rights of the parties to it, dissented in a measure from all who had preceded bïm. He thought it dangerous, on the one hand, to establish a constitutional veto in each of the states, upon any act of the whole, to be exercised whenever the leg. islature may suppose such act unconstitutional; and on the other, it was dangerous to the state governments, to consider that of the United