Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/371

 session of the General Assembly of Virginia, these resolutions were referred to a committee, of which Mr. Madison was the chairman. The result was a report from his pen, which triumphantly vindicated and established the positions taken in the resolutions. It successfully maintained, among other things, that the people of the States — acting in their sovereign capacity, have the right "to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated;" and shows, conclusively, that, without it, and the right of the States to interfere to protect themselves and the constitution, "there would be an end to all relief from usurped powers, and a direct subversion of the rights specified or recognized under all the State constitutions, as well as a plain denial of the fundamental principle, on which our independence itself was declared." It also successfully maintained "that the ultimate right of the parties to the constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to the violation by one delegated authority as well as another, by the judiciary, as well as by the executive or the legislative." And that, "however true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the constitution, to decide, in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authority of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trust." It conclusively