t question is, whether we shall provide for the
peaceable decision of cases of collision. Shall they be decided by law,
or by force? Shall the decisions be decisions of peace, or decisions of
war?

On the occasion which has given rise to this meeting, the proposition
contended for in opposition to the doctrine just stated was that every
State, under certain supposed exigencies, and in certain supposed cases,
might decide for itself, and act for itself, and oppose its own force to
the execution of the laws. By what argument, do you imagine, Gentlemen,
was such a proposition maintained? I should call it metaphysical and
subtle; but these terms would imply at least ingenuity, and some degree
of plausibility; whereas the argument appears to me plain assumption,
mere perverse construction of plain language in the body of the
Constitution itself. As I understand it, when put forth in its revised
and most authentic shape, it is this: that the Constitution provides
that any amendments may be made to it which shall be agreed to by three
fourths of the States; there is, therefore, to be nothing in the
Constitution to which three fourths of the States have not agreed. All
this is true; but then comes this inference, namely, that, when one
State denies the constitutionality of any law of Congress, she may
arrest its execution as to herself, and keep it arrested, till the
States can all be consulted by their conventions, and three fourths of
them shall have decided that the law is constitutional. Indeed, the
inference is still stranger than this; for State conventions have no
authority to construe the Constitution, though they have authority to
amend it; therefore the argument must prove, if it prove any thing,
that, when any one State denies that any particular power is included in
the Constitution, it is to be considered as not included, and cannot be
found there till three fourths of the States agree to insert it. In
short, the result of the whole is, that, though it requires three
fourths of the States to insert any thing in the Constitution, yet any
one State can strike any thing out of it. For the power to strike out,
and the power of deciding, without appeal, upon the construction of what
is already in, are substantially and practically the same.

And, Gentlemen, what a spectacle should we have exhibited under the
actual operation of notions like these! At the very moment when our
government was quoted, praised, and commende