course, they cannot, as such, either make any demand, or assert any right, or enforce any claim.

The conclusion, however, to which our author has arrived,

upon *this point, is not that to which he originally

[*67] designed that his premises should conduct him. The

question of the right of a party to a compact, to repeal or abrogate or suspend it, does not enter into his original proposition, nor result from the argument which he had immediately before used to sustain it. The proposition is, that our Constitution is not a compact, and the argument is, that it is not a compact, because it is a supreme law. The same idea is substantially reaffirmed, in the next argument by which he proposes to prove the main proposition. "The design" (of the Constitution) "is to establish a government. This, of itself, imports legal obligation, permanence, and uncontrollability by any, but the authorities authorized to alter or abolish it."

Admitting, as I cheerfully do, that all this is strictly true, I am yet unable to perceive how it demonstrates that our Constitution is not a compact. May not a compact between sovereign States, be a government? Is there any such necessary restraint upon, or incident of, sovereign power, that it cannot, in any possible exercise of it, produce such a result? If there is, then it was incumbent on the author to show it, because, if there is not, his argument is of no force; and he himself will admit, that the proposition, to say the least of it, is not quite clear enough to be taken as a postulate. His own historical information, if he had drawn on its ample funds, must have furnished him with numerous instances of governments established by compact. He need, not, however, have gone beyond our own Confederation, which, although a compact among sovereign States, in the strictest sense, was yet treated as a government by the people at home, and recognized as such by all foreign powers. It was also "supreme," within its prescribed sphere of action; its rights and powers over the most important subjects of general concern were not only superior to those of the States, but were exclusive. The author's proposition and argument, reduced to their simple terms, may be thus stated. "Our Constitution is not a compact, because it is a government, and because that government is the supreme law."

There are few minds, I think, prepared to embrace this conclusion, or to discern the connection which it has with the premises. There are still fewer who will not feel surprise, that our author should have formed such a conclusion, since an instance to disprove it, furnished by the history of his own country, and existing in his own times, had but just passed under his critical examination and review.

The remaining arguments upon this point are merely inferences drawn from the absence of express words in the Constitution, or from *the opinions of members of the various conventions, expressed in the debates concerning it. [*68] These have already been sufficiently examined. Taking his whole chapter upon this subject together, the reader will probably think that it does not answer the expectations which the public have formed upon the author's powers as a reasoner. His political opponents will be apt to think, also, that he has done something less than justice to them, in the view which he has given of their principles. After laboring, in the way we have seen, to prove that our Constitution is not a compact, he informs us that "The cardinal conclusion for which this doctrine of a compact has been, with so much ingenuity and ability, forced into the language of the Constitution, (for the latter no where alludes to it,) is avowedly to establish that, in construing the Constitution, there is no common umpire; but that, each State, nay, each department of the government of each State, is the supreme judge for itself, of the powers and rights and duties arising under that instrument."

The author must excuse me— -I mean no disrespect to him— if I express my unfeigned astonishment that he should have admitted this passage into a grave and deliberate work on the Constitution. He must, indeed, have been a most careless observer of passing events, and a still more careless reader of the publications of the last ten years, upon this very point, if he has found either in the one or the other, the slightest authority for the opinion which is here advanced. The most ultra of those who have contended for the rights of the States have asserted no such doctrine as he has imputed to them. Neither is it the necessary or legitimate consequence of any principle which they have avowed. I cannot impute to an author of his

acknowledged ability, the weakness of stating a proposition merely for the sake of the poor triumph of refuting it. With what other motive, then, did he make a statement which is unsupported, as matter of fact; which involves no disputed or doubted question of constitutional law, and which attributes to a large class of his fellow-citizens opinions which would justly expose them to the scorn of all correct thinkers? That class profess to hold, in their utmost latitude and in their strictest applications, the doctrines of the State Rights' school of politics. They believe that those doctrines contain the only principle truly conservative of our Constitution; that without them there is no effective check upon the federal government, and, of course, that that government can increase its own powers to an indefinite extent; that this must happen in the natural course of events, and that, ultimately, the whole character of our government will be so changed, that even *its forms [*69] will be rejected, as cumbrous and useless, under the monarchy, in substance, into which we shall have insensibly glided. It is, therefore, because they are lovers of the Constitution and of the Union, that they contend strenuously for the rights of the States. They are no lovers of anarchy nor of revolution. Their principles will cease to be dear to them, whenever they shall cease to subserve the purposes of good order, and of regular and established government. It is their object to preserve the institutions of the country as they are, sincerely believing that nothing more than this is necessary to secure to the people all the blessings which can be expected from any government whatever. They would consider themselves but little entitled to respect as a political party, if they maintained the loose, disjointed, and worse than puerile notions, which the author has not thought it unbecoming to impute to them.

It is the peculiar misfortune of the political party to which I have alluded, to be misunderstood and misrepresented in their doctrines. The passage above quoted affords not the least striking instance of this. It is a great mistake to suppose that they have ever contended that the right of State interposition was given in the express terms of the Constitution; and, therefore, they have not "forced this principle into the language of that

instrument. The right in question is supposed to belong to the States, only because it is an incident of their sovereignty, which the Constitution has not taken away. The author, it is presumed, could scarcely have failed to perceive the difference of the two propositions, nor could he have been unconscious that they did not depend upon the same course of investigation or reasoning. And it is not true, so far as my information extends, that any political party has ever asserted, as a general proposition, that, in construing the Constitution, there is no common umpire. Cases have already been stated, in which the supreme court is universally admitted to be the common umpire, and others will be stated when we come more directly to that part of our subject. In the broad sense, then, in which the author lays down the proposition, it has never been contended for by any political party whatever. Neither is it true, as he is pleased to assert, that any political party has ever supposed, that "each department of the government of each State" had a right to "judge for itself, of the powers, rights and duties, arising under" the Constitution. By the word "judge," he must be understood to mean decide finally; and, in this sense, I venture to affirm that no political party, nor political partizan, even in the wildest dream of political phrensy, has ever entertained the absurd notion here attributed to them. It is difficult to suppose that the author could have been uninformed of the fact, [*70] that nothing short of the power of all the State, acting through its own constituted authorities, has ever been deemed of the least force in this matter. The better and more prevalent opinion is, that a State cannot properly so act, except by a convention called for that express purpose. This was the course pursued by South Carolina; but in the case of the alien and sedition laws, Virginia acted through her ordinary legislature. As to this matter, however, the legislature was very properly considered as representing the power of the whole State.

Thus, in the short paragraph above quoted, the author has fallen into three most remarkable errors, proving that he has, in the strangest way imaginable, misunderstood the principles. which he attempted to explain. The young and plastic minds to which he addressed himself, with the professed object of instructing them in the truths of constitutional interpretation, will

look in vain for the publication or other authority which sustains him. And the political party whose principles he has endeavored to hold up to reproach, has a right to demand of him, why he has chosen to attribute to them absurd and revolutionary notions, unworthy alike of their patriotism and their reason.

It is submitted to the reader's judgment to determine how far the reasoning of the author, which we have just examined, supports his position that our Constitution is not a compact. The opinion of that congress which recommended the call of the convention seems to have been very different; they, at least, did not suppose that a compact could not be a government. Their resolution recommends the call of a convention, for the purpose of "revising the articles of confederation, and reporting such alterations and provisions therein, as would render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of government, and the preservation of the Union." In the opinion of congress, the articles of confederation, which were clearly a compact, were an inadequate constitution, and therefore, they recommended such alterations and provisions therein, as would make that same compact an adequate constitution. Nothing is said. about forming a new government, or changing the essential character of the existing one; and, in fact, no such thing was contemplated at the time. "The sole and exclusive purpose" of the convention was so to amend, or add to, the provisions of the articles of confederation, as would form "a more perfect union, &c.," upon the principles of the union already existing. It is clear, therefore, that, in the opinion of congress, and of all the States that adopted their recommendation, that union or compact was a constitution of government.

*It is worthy of remark, that of the States, New [*71] Hampshire and the author's own State of Massachusetts, expressly call the Constitution a compact, in their acts of ratification; and no other State indicates a different view of it. This tends to prove that public opinion at the time had not drawn the nice distinction which is now insisted on, between a government and a compact; and that those who for eight years had been living under a compact, and forming treaties with foreign powers by virtue of its provisions, had never for a moment imagined that it was not a government.