Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/610

594 such as may be expressly inhibited to the states by the Constitution. To establish the truth of this position, so essential to the safety of those states, it would seem sufficient to appeal to their constant exercise of this right, at all times, without restriction, or question, both before and since the adoption of the Constitution.

That the states which form our federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, bound together by a constitutional compact, and are possessed of all the powers belonging to distinct and separate states, excepting such as are delegated to be exercised by the general government, is assumed as unquestionable. The compact itself expressly provides that all powers not delegated are reserved to the states and the people. To ascertain, then, whether the power in question is delegated or reserved, it is only necessary to ascertain whether it is to be found among the enumerated powers or not. If it be not among them, it belongs, of course, to the reserved powers. On turning to the Constitution, it will be seen that, while the power of defending the country against external danger is found among the enumerated, the instrument is wholly silent as to the power of defending the internal peace and security of the states, and, of course, reserves to the states this important power, as it stood before the adoption of the Constitution, with no other limitations, as has been stated, except such as are expressly prescribed by the instrument itself From what has been stated, it may be inferred that the right of a state to defend itself against internal dangers is a part of the great primary and inherent right of self-defence, which, by the laws of nature, belongs to all communities; and so jealous were the states of this essential right, without which their independence could not be preserved, that it is expressly provided by the Constitution, that the general government shall not assist a state, even in case of domestic violence, except on the application of the authorities of the state itself; thus excluding, by a necessary consequence, its interference in all other cases.



, January, 1836.

Mr. CUSHING. Looking into the Constitution, I find, among the amendments proposed by the Congress of 1789, and in the very first of the number, the following article:—

Long before I had imagined that such a right would ever be called in question, I remember to have read the remark of a distinguished jurist and magistrate of the state of Virginia, (Tucker's Notes on Blackstone,) complaining that the concluding words of the clause I have cited from the Constitution did not so strongly guard the great right of petition as the liberties of the people demanded. On the other hand, a still more distinguished jurist and magistrate of my own state, Massachusetts, (Story,) in remarking upon the same article, expresses the opinion that it is ample in terms; because, he adds, "It [the right of petition] results from the very nature of the structure and institutions of a republican