Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/59

Rh to &quot;the States respectively,&quot; that is, to each State separately and distinctly. The Constitution contains no provision whatsoever for the exercise of the rights reserved nor any stipulation respecting it. It does not seem reasonable to look to the government of the United States, in which the delegated powers are vested, for the means of resisting encroachments on the reserved powers. That would be to expect power to tie its own hands, to relinquish its own claims, or to look for protection against danger to the quarter from which only it could possibly come, (1 Calhoun, 237.) Every sovereignty is the judge alone of its own compacts and agreements. Each State must have the right to interpret the agreement for itself unless it has clearly waived that right in favor of another power. That it has not been waived has been placed beyond refutation, for otherwise the powers of the government at Washington are universal and the enumerations and reservation are idle mockeries. And so a written constitution, however carefully guarded the grant and limitations, is no barrier against the usurpations of governments and no security for the rights and liberties of the people. Restrictions are contemptuously disregarded, or undermined by the gradual process of usurpation, until the instrument is of no more force, nor any more respected than an act of Congress. Constitutional scruples are hooted at, and suggested barriers of want of authority are ridiculed as abstractions or the theories of political doctrinaires. The Federal judiciary, the Congress, the Executive, the Constitution, the Union, are but emanations of the sovereignty of the States, and the States are not bound by their wishes, necessities, action, except as they have agreed to be bound, and this agreement was made, not with the Union, the Federal government, their agent and creature, but with one another. &quot;Vicious legislation must be remedied by the people who suffer from the effects of it and not by those who enjoy its benefits.&quot; (Bryan.)