Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/531

 was intended, & so understood by the Convention, it would be removed by the course of proceeding on them as recorded, in its Journal. many of the propositions made in the Convention, fall within this remark: being, as is not unusual general in their phrase, but if adopted to be reduced to their proper shape & specification.

3. to negative all laws passed by the several States contravening, in the opinion of the national Legislature, the Articles of Union or any Treaty subsisting under their Authority. (The necessity of some constitutional and effective provision guarding the Constn. & laws of the Union, agst. violations of them by the laws of the States, was felt and taken for granted by all from the commencement, to the conclusion of the work performed by the Convention. Every vote in the Journal involving the opinion, proves a unanimity among the Deputations, on this point. A voluntary & unvaried concurrence of so many, (then 13 with a prospect of continued increase), distinct & independent authorities, in expounding & acting on a rule of Conduct, which must be the same for all, or in force in none, was a calculation, forbidden by a knowledge of human nature, and especially so by the experience of the Confederacy, the defects of which were to be supplied by the Convention.)

With this view of the subject, the only question was the mode of controul on the Individual Legislatures. This might be either preventive or corrective; The former by a negative on the State laws; the latter by a Legislative repeal by a Judicial supersedeas, or by an administrative arrest of them. The preventive mode as the best if equally practicable with the corrective, was brought by Mr. R. to the consideration of the Convention. It was, tho’ not a little favored as appears by the votes in the Journal finally abandoned, as not reducible to practice. Had the negative been assigned to the Senatorial branch of the Govt. representedg the State Legislatures, thus giving to the whole a controul of these over each, the expedient would probably have been still more favorably recd; tho’ even in that form, subject to insuperable objections, in the distance of many of the State Legislatures, and the multiplicity of the laws of each.

Of the corrective modes, a repeal by the National Legislature was pregnant with inconveniences rendering it inadmissible.

The only remaining safeguard to the Constitution and laws of the Union, agst. the encroachment of its members and anarchy among themselves, is that which was adopted, in the Declaration that the Constitution laws & Treaties of the U.S should be the supreme law of the Land, and as such be obligatory on the Authorities of the States as well as those of the U.S.

The last of the proposed Legislative powers was “to call forth