Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 11.djvu/820

 776 APPENDIX. PROCLAMATI ON. N0. 26. press terms, an important part of the Constitution itself, and of laws passed to give it effect, which have never been alleged to be unconstitutional. The Constitution declares that the judicial powers of the United States extend to cases arising under the laws of the United States, and that such laws, the Constitution, and treaties, shall be paramount to the State Constitutions and laws. The judiciary act prescribes the mode by which the case may be brought before a court of the United States, by appeal, when a State tribunal shall decide against this provision of the Constitution. The ordinance declares there shall be no appea.l—makes the State law paramount to the Constitution and laws of the United States-—fbrces judges and jurors to swear that they will disregard their provisions; and even makes it penal in a suitor to attempt relief by appeal. It further declares that it shall not be lawihl for- the authorities of the United States, or of that State, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the revenue laws within its mxts. Here is a. law of the United States, not even pretended to be unconstitutional, repealed by the authority of a small majority of the voters of a single State. Here is a provision of the Constitution which is solemnly abrogated by the same authorit. On sxkh expositions and reasonings, the ordinance grounds not only an assertion of the right to annul the la.ws of which it complains, but to enforce it by a threat of sececling from the Union if any attempt is made to execute them. This right to seccde is deduced from the nature of the Constitution, which, they say, is a compact between Sovereign States,wl10 have preserved their whole sovereignty, and therefore, are subject to no superior; that, because they made the compact, they can break it when, in their opinion, it has been departed from by the other States. Fallacious as this course of reasoning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advocates in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on which it rests. The peo le of the United States formed the Constitution, acting through the State legislatures in making the compact, to meet and discuss its provisions, and acting in separate conventions when they ratified those provisions; but the terms used in its construction, show it to be a rovernment in which the people of all the States, collectively,a.re represented. de are one people in the choice of President and Vice-President. Here the States have no other agency than to direct the mode in which the votes shall be given. The candidates having the majorityof all the votes are chosen. The electors of a majority of States may have given their votes for one candidate, and yet another may be chosen. The people then, and not the States, are represented in the Executive branch. In the House of Representatives there is this difference, that the ple of one State do not, as in the case of President and Vice-President, allegote for the same officers. The people of all the States do not vote for all the members, each State electing only its own representatives. But this creates no material distinction. When chosen, they are all representatives of the United States, not representatives of the particular State from which they come. They are paid by the United States, not by the State; nor are they accountable to it for any act done in the performance of their legislative functions; and however they may in practice, as it is their duty to do, consult and prefer the interestsof their particular constituents when they come in conflict with any other partial or local interest, yet it is their first an highest duty, as representatives of the United States, to promote the general good. The Constitution of the United States then forms a government not a leagxe; and whether it be formed by compact between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government in which all the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States—they retained all the power they did not grant. But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute, jointly with the other States, a single nation, cannot, fronrthat period, possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation; and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a. compact, but it is an offence vainst the whole Union. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from thehnion, is to say that the United States are not a nation, because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any olfencc. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only