arantee of the perpetuity of
the Union, and the denial of it sounded the first serious note of its
dissolution. The conservative efficiency of "_State interposition_," for
maintenance of the essential principles of the Union against aggression
or decadence, is one of the most conspicuous features in the debates of
the various State Conventions by which the Constitution was ratified.
Perhaps their ideas of the particular form in which this interposition
was to be made may have been somewhat indefinite; and left to be reduced
to shape by the circumstances when they should arise, but the principle
itself was assumed and asserted as fundamental. But for a firm reliance
upon it, as a sure resort in case of need, it may safely be said that
the Union would never have been formed. It would be unjust to the wisdom
and sagacity of the framers of the Constitution to suppose that they
entirely relied on paper barriers for the protection of the rights of
minorities. Fresh from the defense of violated charters and faithless
aggression on inalienable rights, it might, _a priori_, be assumed that
they would require something more potential than mere promises to
protect them from human depravity and human ambition. That they did so
is to be found in the debates both of the General and the State
Conventions, where State interposition was often declared to be the
bulwark against usurpation.

At an early period in the history of the Federal Government, the States
of Kentucky and Virginia found reason to reassert this right of State
interposition. In the first of the famous resolutions drawn by Mr.
Jefferson in 1798, and with some modification adopted by the Legislature
of Kentucky in November of that year, it is declared that, "whensoever
the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are
_unauthoritative, void, and of no force_; that to this compact each
State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that this
Government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final
judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would
have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its
powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having
no common judge, _each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as
well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress_."

In the Virginia resolutions, drawn by Mr. Madison, adopted on the 24th
of December, 1798, and rea