the supremacy of the general government. While declining to allow a
provision of this character to be incorporated in the Constitution, they
by no means disapproved of a strong supreme central government, but
merely adopted a less direct and therefore easier method of attaining
their end.

While Calhoun maintained that in order to make the limitations on the
authority of the general government effective it was necessary that a
state should have a veto on Federal laws, he did not contend that the
verdict of a state should be final. It would still be possible for the
general government to override the veto of a state by procuring a
constitutional amendment which would remove all doubt as to its right to
exercise the power in question. This method of appeal, he argued, was
always open to the general government, since it represented and was in
the hands of the numerical majority. This would be true, however, only
when the party in power had the requisite two-thirds majority in both
houses of Congress, or at least controlled the legislatures in
two-thirds of the states. Otherwise its control of the general
government would not enable it to propose the desired constitutional
amendment. With this qualification Calhoun's contention was correct. On
the other hand the state could not defend itself against Federal
aggression, since, belonging to the minority, it would have no means of
compelling the submission of a constitutional amendment involving the
point in dispute. The effect of a state veto on an act of Congress would
be to compel the latter to choose between abandoning the law in question
as unconstitutional and appealing to the constitution-making power in
defense of its claim. If it chose the latter alternative and succeeded
in having its authority supported by an appropriate constitutional
amendment, there was nothing for the state to do but submit, provided
that the amendment in question was one clearly within the scope of the
amending power. If, as Calhoun assumed, it was the purpose of the
Constitution to withhold from a mere majority in control of the general
government the power to enact and enforce unconstitutional legislation,
the veto of a state would seem to be the only means by which the
constitutional rights of a minority of the states could be protected.

Calhoun did not question the right of the Supreme Court of the United
States to declare an act of Congress null and void, or its right to pass
judgment up