Page:State Papers on Nullification.djvu/274

 260 course, — still at any rate it must be construed in some way; and the force of any grant, in respect of the powers conveyed by it either expressly or impliedly, is and must forever continue to be a question of coaistruction. That construction is a process of definition, dependant upon the same rules of law, philology, and common sense, which settle the construction of other instruments; and if any doubts arise thereon, the Constitution itself provides for the mode by which such doubts are to be removed, namely, by means of the Supreme Court of the United States. To assemble a Convention for the purpose of making such construction, would not only be contrary to the tenor of the Constitution itself, but would serve to defeat its own object, because every definition or explanation, which a Convention should undertake to give concerning questions which now exist, would of necessity furnish the materials of new questions, just as difficult to decide as the old ones, and just as much requiring the interposition of a Convention. Your Committee are of opinion that the Constitution, as it stands, is a model of clear, exact, intelligible specification and limitation, admirable for the distinctness of its language, remarkable as well for legal precision of expression, as for the profound political wisdom which characterizes it; and they have no hopes that in these respects it could be improved as a whole by the labors of a new Convention. Your Committee, with all due respect for the Legislature of Georgia, feel bound to say they are not conscious that Congress has frequently shewn a disposition "to act under assumed powers" — provided the Legislature of Georgia understand by those words what alone the Committee can understand by them, — powers not conferred by the Constitution. Congress acts on the people through the medium of legislation, and it cannot so act without the concurrence of the Executive; and the rules of conduct which Congress and the Executive conjointly prescribe in the form of laws, are subject to the revision of the Judiciary, by whom their constitutionality, and of course their validity, is to be judged. Your Committee deem this mode of redress amply sufficient, in the ordinary course of affairs, to protect the people against the actual exercise of usurped powers;