Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/71

 as that of which the President has spoken in this Proclamation, a Nation for certain purposes only.

It may be said perhaps, that although some of the States might refuse or omit to pass the laws necessary to give effect to those provisions of the Federal Constitution, which require the appointment of a President and Vice-President, of a Senate and House of Representatives, yet so long as others do so, the government would go on, heedless of the recusant States. I will not stop to enquire whether this is so; for even if it is, it does not vary my argument, the object of which is to shew, that the Federal Government is not preserved by its own means, but solely at the will and by means of the States. Its absolute dependance upon these for its existence, would not be less, if that dependance was upon some, and not upon all: nor would the tenure upon which it holds all its powers, be one whit less precarious, if these powers are held under the will of all the States. In either case, it is a dependant thing, and its dependance for existence is upon the States.

If may be said also, that the faith of the States is pledged, and all their officers are bound by an oath, to support the Constitution of the United States; therefore, it is not fair to reason from a supposition which rests upon a breach of a nation's faith, and the violation of the oaths of its People.

This is all true, but it only proves that for which I am contending, that this Federal Government is preserved solely by the States, who of necessity, are, and must be, the sole judges of what their faith requires; and who could absolve their own citizens from the obligations of this oath, as easily as they did from the obligations of that which pledged their allegiance to the British Crown.—And here let me beg of those who rely upon this argument of pledged faith, to read the last clause of the thirteenth Article of the Old Confederation; and in doing so, to remember the cases of North Carolina and Rhode Island, to which I have before adverted. I beg every Virginian too, to think of his own oath of fidelity, and to settle with his own conscience whether that is abrogated by that to which I have before referred.

Having this shewn, that the Constitution of the United States was established by the will of the several States, and is preserved