Court of the United States, in every such case must be final and conclusive, because the constitution gives to that tribunal the power to decide and gives no appeal from the decision."

Thus, it will be seen, these extracts teach the doctrine of the State Rights' party as taught by Jefferson and Madison, in the Virginia proceedings, in their text book, the "Federalist," and with such emphasis in the correspondence of Mr. Madison, so far as that doctrine relates to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It may be truly said, one great object of that party is not only to enforce the judicial, but all the other powers of the Union, to the fullest extent within the limits which separate them from the reserved powers, and to provide that all along the boundary line of that separation, the several states shall stand as sentinels to guard it by all constitutional means, from being crossed by the forces on either side; for it is the line of liberty and law, of peace and union. The complicity of this government may render the task difficult, but it is no less obligatory. Novel, indeed, our government is in its nature, unlike all others -"the first born of its kind among the nations of the earth-its powers all beginning and ending in the constitution. Its judicial power comes to it, not as to other goverments by inheritance or succession, but created and limited to the words of that instrument. All there is of it, neither more nor less, is embodied in the 3d Article; but within that limit, its judgments, until reversed by itself, or by constitutional amendment, are the supreme law of the land.

Wrong and dangerous positions based on false constructions of the Constitution, have been assumed in critical periods of our history in the name of state rights, which have always met with the condemnation and rebuke of the Democracy. As illustrative of these and as instructive lessons of the past, let us bring a few of them in review before us.

In 1798, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in the case of The Commonwealth v. Cobbet, by a unanimous opinion first proclaimed the great political heresy afterwards adopted by Massachusetts, Ohio, and South Carolina, viz.: that the constitution of the Union was only a league, without a common arbiter, and that the Supreme Court cannot decide a constitutional question between a State and the General Government. In this case Pennsylvania decided: "If a State differ with the United States, there is no common arbiter but the people, who should adjust the affair by making

amendments in the constitutional way, or suffer from the defect. In such a case the Constitution of the United States is Federal; it is a league or treaty made by individual States as one party, and all the States as another party. There is no provision in the Constitution that in such a case the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States shall control and be conclusive. Neither can Congress by a

law confer that power."

The first instance on record of rebellion by a state against the general Government, was that of Massachusetts during the war of 1812, on the alleged ground that she was justified by the doctrine of state rights and state sovereignty. After six years of insult to our national flag and of outrage to our seamen, committed by England, and patiently endured by America, our then noble and patriotic President, Mr. Madison, in June, 1812, sent to Congress his celebrated war message, in which, among many other wrongs enumerated, he referred to one in the following touching words: "British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it." This practice, he said, "so far from affecting British subjects alone under the pretext of searching for them, thousands of American citizens under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been borne from their country and from everything dear to them, have been dragged on board ships of a foreign nation, and exposed under the severities of their discipline, to be exiled to the most distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the battles of the oppressors, and to be melancholy instruments of taking away those of their own brethren." Congress responded at once to this noble appeal of the President by a declaration of war. Patriot states and patriot men, throughout the land rallied with heart and soul in the cause beneath the national flag, and stood shoulder to shoulder around it. But Massachusetts, faithless among the faithful, interposed her own sovereignty, in deeds and declarations of hostility, to resist the authority and defeat the action of the Federal Government. When the war waged the fiercest and the battles were bloodiest, she publicly denounced her own Government, and apologized for the foe, pleading in defense of her treason, State Rights and State Sovereignty! In June, 1813, both Houses of the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a remonstrance against the war, in which they declare: "The promptness

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with which Great Britain hastened to repeal her orders before the declaration of war by the United States was known to her, and the restoration of an immense amount of property then within her power, can leave but little doubt that the war on our part was premature, and still less that the perseverance in it after that repeal was known, was improper, impolitic and unjust." Memorials from certain towns in Massachusetts, the three largest of which in population being Newburyport, New Bedford, and Newbury, were referred to a joint committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, whose report was adopted in February, 1814, and in which the committee say, that "the tone and spirit in all of these memorialists are the same,” and that the sentiments and feelings expressed in them “are the genuine voice of a vast majority of the citizens of this commonwealth." The memorialists from Newbury, in calling upon the Legislature of Massachusetts for protection against the measures of the Federal Government, make this appeal: We call upon our state Legislature to protect us in the enjoyment of those privileges to assert which our fathers died, and to defend which we profess ourselves ready to resist unto blood. We pray your honorable body to adopt measures immediately to secure to us especially our undoubted right of trade within our state. We are ourselves ready to aid you in securing it to us 'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must;' and we pledge to you the sacrifice of our lives and property, in support of whatever measures the dignity and liberties of this free, sovereign and independent state may seem, to your wisdom, to demand." The committee, in their report, adopted by the Legislature, identifying themselves and a majority in the state with these sentiments, further say, that "They [the committee] believe in the existence of these grievances and in the causes to which they have been ascribed. They believe that this war, so fertile in calamities and so threatening in its consequences, has been waged with the worst possible views, and carried on in the worst possible manner, forming a union of wickedness and weakness which defies for a parallel the annals of the world."

In a message of Gov. Strong to the Legislature of Massachusetts, of the 14th of August, 1812, he said: "On the 22d of June I received a letter from Gen. Dearborn, informing me that war was declared against Great Britain, and requesting me to order fortyone companies of the detached militia into the service of the United

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States, for the defense of the posts and harbors in this state.' * "I have been fully disposed to comply with the requirements of the Constitution of the United States and the laws made in pursuance of it, and sincerely regretted that any request could be made by an officer of the National Government to which I could not constitutionally conform. But it appears to me that the requisition affixed was of that character, and I was under the same obligation to maintain the rights of the state as to support the Constitution of the United States. If the demand was not warranted, I should have violated my duty in a most important point, if I had attempted to enforce it and thereby assisted in withdrawing the militia from the rightful authority of the state." "I thought it expedient to convene the Council and request their advice on the subject." "The Council advised that they were unable, from a view of the Constitution of the United States and the documents affixed, to perceive that any exigency existed which should render it allowable to comply with the third requisition.".

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In the report of the joint committee, made February, 1814, above alluded to, which was adopted and approved by the Legislature of Massachusetts, they declare: "The sovereignty reserved to the states was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign state of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal corporation, without power to protect its people, and to defend them from oppression from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the national compact is violated, and the citizens of this state are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized law, this Legislature is bound to interpose and wrest from the oppressor his victims. This is the spirit of our Union, and thus has it been explained by the very man [President Madison] who now sets at defiance all the principles of his early political life. The question, then, is not a question of power or right with this Legislature, but of time and expediency." "We know of no surer and better way to prevent that hostility to the Union, the result of oppression, which will eventually terminate in its downfall, than for the wise and good, of those states which have been themselves oppressed, to assemble with delegated authority, and to propose, and even insist upon, such explicit declarations of power or instruction as will prevent the most hardy from any future attempts to oppress under the

color of the Constitution. This was the mode proposed by Mr. Madison, in answer to objections made as to the tendency of the General Government to usurp upon that of the states; and though he, at a former period, led the Legislature of Virginia into an opposition without any justifiable cause, yet it may be supposed that he, and all others who understood the principles of our concurrent sovereignty, will acknowledge the fitness and propriety of their asserting rights which no people can ever relinquish." The report of another joint committee, approved by the Legislature of Massachusetts in October, 1814, declares that she sought a relief “for which the ordinary mode of procuring amendments to the Constitution affords no reasonable expectations in season to prevent the completion of its ruin;" and further, that "the framers of the Constitution made provision to amend defects which were known to be incidental to every human institution, but the provision itself was not less liable to be found defective upon experiment than other parts of the instrument;" and that the Government was "unfit for a state of peace or war.” Therefore, with no intention of looking to any constitutional mode of relief, the Legislature of Massachusetts, in October, 1814, appointed twelve of her ablest and most distinguished men to attend a convention of representatives of Connecticut and other New England states, to obtain relief from propositions to be made and insisted on by states acting together in their separate and sovereign capacities, in hostility to the Federal Government. A report, signed by the twelve delegates from Massachusetts, viz., George Cabot, Nathan Dane, William Prescott, Harrison G. Otis, Timothy Bigelow, Samuel S. Wilde, George Bliss, Hadigah Baylies, Joseph Lyman, Stephen Longfellow, Joshua Thomas, and Daniel Waldo, was approved by the Legislature of both Massachusetts and Connecticut. In this report Massachusetts, in justification of her course, declared, "It is as much the duty of the state authorities to watch over the rights reserved, as of the United States to exercise the powers which are delegated." "The Acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are absolutely void is an undeniable position. It does not consist with the respect and forbearance due from a Confederate State towards the General Government, to fly to open resistance upon every infraction of the Constitution. The mode and the energy of the opposition should always conform to the nature of the violation, the intention