"What the fate of the Constitution of the U. S. would be if a small proportion of States could expunge parts of it particularly valued by a large majority, can have but one answer.

"The difficulty is not removed by limiting the doctrine to cases of construction. How many cases of that sort, involving cardinal provisions of the Constitution, have occurred? How many now exist? How many may hereafter spring up? How many might be ingeniously created, if entitled to the privilege of a decision in the mode proposed?

"Is it certain that the principle of that mode wd. not reach farther than is contemplated? If a single State can of right require—of its co-States to overrule its exposition of the Constitution, because that proportion is authorized to amend it, would the plea be less plausible that, as the Constitution was unanimously established, it ought to be unanimously expounded?

"The reply to all such suggestions seems to be unavoidable and irresistible, that the Constitution is a compact; that its text is to be expounded according to the provision for expounding it, making a part of the compact; and that none of the parties can rightfully renounce the expounding provision more than any other part. When such a right accrues, as it may accrue, it must grow out of abuses of the compact releasing the sufferers from their fealty to it.

"In favour of the nullifying claim for the States individually, it appears, as you observe, that the proceedings of the Legislature of Virga. in 98 & 99 agst. the Alien and Sedition Acts are much dwelt upon.

“It may often happen, as experience proves, that erroneous constructions, not anticipated, may not be sufficiently guarded against in the language used; and it is due to the distinguished individuals who have misconceived the intention of those proceedings to suppose that the meaning of the Legislature, though well comprehended at the time, may not now be obvious to those unacquainted with the contemporary indications and impressions.

"But it is believed that by keeping in view the distinction between the Govt. of the States & the States in the sense in

which they were parties to the Constn.; between the rights of the parties, in their concurrent and in their individual capacities; between the several modes and objects of interposition agst. the abuses of power, and especially between interpositions within the purview of the Constn. & interpositions appealing from the Constn. to the rights of nature paramount to all Constitutions; with these distinctions kept in view, and an attention, always of explanatory use, to the views & arguments which were combated, a confidence is felt, that the Resolutions of Virginia, as vindicated in the Report on them, will be found entitled to an exposition, showing a consistency in their parts and an inconsistency of the whole with the doctrine under consideration.

"That the Legislature cd. not have intended to sanction such a doctrine is to be inferred from the debates in the House of Delegates, and from the address of the two Houses to their constituents on the subject of the resolutions. The tenor of the debates wch. were ably conducted and are understood to have been revised for the press by most, if not all, of the speakers, discloses no reference whatever to a constitutional right in an individual State to arrest by force the operation of a law of the U. S. Concert among the States for redress against the alien & sedition laws, as acts of usurped power, was a leading sentiment, and the attainment of a concert the immediate object of the course adopted by the Legislature, which was that of inviting the other States 'to concur in declaring the act to be unconstitutional, and to co-operate by the necessary & proper measures in maintaining unimpaired the authorities' rights & liberties reserved to the States respectively & to the people.' That by the necessary and proper measures to be concurrently and co-operatively taken, were meant measures known to the Constitution, particularly the ordinary controul of the people and Legislatures of the States over the Govt. of the U. S. cannot be doubted; and the interposition of this controul as the event showed was equal to the occasion.

"It is worthy of remark, and explanatory of the intentions of the Legislature, that the words 'not law, but utterly null,

void, and of no force or effect,' which had followed, in one of the Resolutions, the word 'unconstitutional,' were struck out by common consent. Tho the words were in fact but synonymous with 'unconstitutional,' yet to guard against a misunderstanding of this phrase as more than declaratory of opinion, the word unconstitutional alone was retained, as not liable to that danger.

"The published address of the Legislature to the people their constituents affords another conclusive evidence of its views. The address warns them against the encroaching spirit of the Genl. Govt., argues the unconstitutionality of the alien & sedition acts, points to other instances in which the constl. limits had been overleaped; dwells upon the dangerous mode of deriving power by implications; and in general presses the necessity of watching over the consolidating tendency of the Fedl. policy. But nothing is sd. that can be understood to look to means of maintaining the rights of the States beyond the regular ones within the forms of the Constn.

"If any farther lights on the subject cd. be needed, a very strong one is reflected in the answers to the Resolutions by the States which protested agst. them. The main objection to these, beyond a few general complaints agst. the inflammatory tendency of the resolutions was directed agst. the assumed authy. of a State Legisle. to declare a law of the U. S. unconstitutional, which they pronounced an unwarrantable interference with the exclusive jurisdiction of the Supreme Ct. of the U. S. Had the resolns. been regarded as avowing & maintaining a right in an indivl. State, to arrest by force the execution of a law of the U. S. it must be presumed that it wd. have been a conspicuous object of their denunciation." (Letter to Edward Everett. Hunt's Edition of Madison's Writings, 9:383-403.)

"I recd. in due time your favor enclosing your two late speeches, and requesting my views of the subject they discuss. The speeches could not be read without leaving a strong impression of the ability & eloquence which have justly called forth the eulogies of the public. But there are doctrines

espoused in them from which I am constrained to dissent. I allude particularly to the doctrine which I understand to assert that the States perhaps their Governments have, singly, a constitutional right to resist & by force annul within itself acts of the Government of the U. S. which it deems unauthorized by the Constitution of the U. S.; although such acts be not within the extreme cases of oppression, which justly absolve the State from the Constitutional compact to which it is a party.

"It appears to me that in deciding on the character of the Constitution of the U. S. it is not sufficiently kept in view that being an unprecedented modification of the powers of Govt. it must not be looked at thro' the refracting medium either of a consolidated Government, or of a confederated Govt.; that being essentially different from both, it must be its own interpreter according to its text and the facts of the

case.

"Its characteristic peculiarities are 1. the mode of its formation. 2. its division of the supreme powers of Govt. between the States in their united capacity, and the States in their individual capacities.

"1. It was formed not by the Governments of the States as the Federal Government superseded by it was formed; nor by a majority of the people of the U. S. as a single Community, in the manner of a consolidated Government.

"It was formed by the States, that is by the people of each State, acting in their highest sovereign capacity thro' Conventions representing them in that capacity, in like manner and by the same authority as the State Constitutions were formed; with this characteristic & essential difference that the Constitution of the U. S. being a compact among the States that is the people thereof making them the parties to the compact over one people for specified objects cannot be revoked or changed at the will of any State within its limits as the Constitution of a State may be changed at the will of the State, that is the people who compose the State & are the parties to its constitution & retained their powers over it. The idea of a compact between the Governors & the Governed was exploded

with the Royal doctrine that Government was held by some tenure independent of the people.

"The Constitution of the U. S. is therefore within its prescribed sphere a Constitution in as strict a sense of the term as are the Constitutions of the individual States, within their respective spheres.

"2. And that it divides the supreme powers of Govt. between the two Governments is seen on the face of it; the powers of war & taxation, that is of the sword & the purse, of commerce of treaties &c. vested in the Govt. of the U. S. being of as high a character as any of the powers reserved to the State Govts.

"If we advert to the Govt. of the U. S. as created by the Constitution it is found also to be a Govt. in as strict a sense of the term, within the sphere of its powers, as the Govts. created by the Constitutions of the States are within their respective spheres. It is like them organized into a Legislative, Executive & Judicial Dept. It has, like them, acknowledged cases in which the powers of those Departments are to operate and the operation is to be the same in both; that is directly on the persons & things submitted to their power. The concurrent operation in certain cases is one of the features constituting the peculiarity of the system.

"Between these two Constitutional Govts., the one operating in all the States, the others operating in each respectively; with the aggregate powers of Govt. divided between them, it could not escape attention, that controversies concerning the boundary of Jurisdiction would arise, and that without some adequate provision for deciding them, conflicts of physical force might ensue. A political system that does not provide for a peaceable & authoritative termination of occurring controversies, can be but the name & shadow of a Govt. the very object and end of a real Govt. being the substitution of law & order for uncertainty confusion & violence.

"That a final decision of such controversies, if left to each of 13 States now 24 with a prospective increase, would make the Constitution & laws of the U. S. different in different States, was obvious; and equally obvious that this diversity