Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/396

 To supersede either, is to convert it in fact, whatever may be its theory, into an absolute government.

But it cannot be restored to its federal character without restoring the separate governments of the several States, and the States themselves, to their true position. From the latter the whole system emanated. They ordained and established all the parts; first, by their separate action, their respective State governments; and next, by their concurrent action, with the indispensable co-operation of their respective governments, they ordained and established a common government, as a supplement to their separate governments. The object was, to do that, by a common agent, which could not be as well done, or done at all, by their separate agencies. The relation, then, in which the States stand to the system, is that of the creator to the creature; and that, in which the two governments stand to each other, is of coequals and co-ordinates — as has been fully established — with the important difference, in this last respect, that the separate governments of the States were the first in the order of time, and that they exercised an active and indispensable agency in the creation of the common government of all the States; or, as it is styled, the government of the United States.

Such is their true position — a position, not only essential in theory, in the formation of a federal government — but to its preservation in practice. Without it, the system could not have been formed — and without it, it cannot be preserved. The supervision