Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/536

520 submitted to the Supreme Court, and be one that will, in the opinion of the state, justify the risk of a withdrawal from the Union, that this last extreme remedy may at once be resorted to.

That the right of resistance to the operation of an act of Congress, in the extreme cases above alluded to, is not a right derived from the Constitution, but can be justified only on the supposition that the Constitution has been broken, and the state absolved from its obligation; and that, whenever resorted to, it must be at the risk of all the penalties attached to an unsuccessful resistance to established authority.

That the alleged right of a state to put a veto on the execution of a law of the United States, which such state may declare to be unconstitutional, attended (as, if it exist, it must be) with a correlative obligation, on the part of the general government, to refrain from executing it; and the further alleged obligation, on the part of that government, to submit the question to the states, by proposing amendments, are not given by the Constitution, nor do they grow out of any of the reserved powers.

That the exercise of the powers last mentioned would introduce a feature in our government not expressed in the Constitution; not implied from any right of sovereignty reserved to the states; not suspected to exist, by the friends or enemies of the Constitution, when it was framed or adopted; not warranted by practice or contemporaneous exposition, nor implied by the true construction of the Virginia resolutions in '98.

That the introduction of this feature in our government would totally change its nature, make it inefficient, invite to dissension, and end, at no distant period, in separation; and that, if it had been proposed in the form of an explicit provision in the Constitution, it would have been unanimously rejected, both in the Convention which framed that instrument and in those which adopted it.

That the theory of the federal government being the result of the general will of the people of the United States in their aggregate capacity, and founded in no degree on compact between the states, would tend to the most disastrous practical results; that it would place three fourths of the states at the mercy of one fourth, and lead inevitably to a consolidated government, and finally to monarchy, if the doctrine were generally admitted; and if partially so, and opposed, to civil dissensions.

Mr. WOODBURY. From the very fact of there being two parties in the federal government, it would seem a necessary inference that the agents of each party, on proper occasions, must be allowed, and are required by an official oath, to conform to the Constitution, and to decide on the extent of its provisions, so far as is necessary for the expression of their own views, and for the performance of their own duties. This being, to my mind, the rationale of the case, I look on the express words of the Constitution as conforming to it, by limiting the grant of judicial jurisdiction to the Supreme Court, both by the Constitution and by the acts of Congress, to specify enumerated objects. In the same way, there are limited grants of judicial jurisdiction to state courts, under most of the state constitutions. When cases present themselves within these grants, the judges, whether of the state or United States, must decide, and enforce their decision with such means as are confided to them by the laws and the constitutions. But, when questions arise, not confided to the judiciary of the states, or United States, the officers concerned in those questions must themselves decide them; and, in the end, must pursue such course as