anization of the judicial department, and in that
bill made provision for the exercise of this appellate power of the
Supreme Court, in all the proper cases, in whatsoever court arising; and
this appellate power has now been exercised for more than forty years,
without interruption, and without doubt.

As to the cases, Sir, which do not come before the courts, those
political questions which terminate with the enactments of Congress, it
is of necessity that these should be ultimately decided by Congress
itself. Like other legislatures, it must be trusted with this power. The
members of Congress are chosen by the people, and they are answerable to
the people; like other public agents, they are bound by oath to support
the Constitution. These are the securities that they will not violate
their duty, nor transcend their powers. They are the same securities
that prevail in other popular governments; nor is it easy to see how
grants of power can be more safely guarded, without rendering them
nugatory. If the case cannot come before the courts, and if Congress be
not trusted with its decision, who shall decide it? The gentleman says,
each State is to decide it for herself. If so, then, as I have already
urged, what is law in one State is not law in another. Or, if the
resistance of one State compels an entire repeal of the law, then a
minority, and that a small one, governs the whole country.

Sir, those who espouse the doctrines of nullification reject, as it
seems to me, the first great principle of all republican liberty; that
is, that the majority _must_ govern. In matters of common concern, the
judgment of a majority _must_ stand as the judgment of the whole. This
is a law imposed on us by the absolute necessity of the case; and if we
do not act upon it, there is no possibility of maintaining any
government but despotism. We hear loud and repeated denunciations
against what is called _majority government_. It is declared, with much
warmth, that a majority government cannot be maintained in the United
States. What, then, do gentlemen wish? Do they wish to establish a
_minority_ government? Do they wish to subject the will of the many to
the will of the few? The honorable gentleman from South Carolina has
spoken of absolute majorities and majorities concurrent; language wholly
unknown to our Constitution, and to which it is not easy to affix
definite ideas. As far as I understand it, it would teach us that the
absolute ma