ainst unconstitutional acts of the federal
than of the State legislatures, for this plain reason, that as every
such act of the former will be an invasion of the rights of the latter,
these will be ever ready to mark the innovation, to sound the alarm to
the people, and to exert their local influence in effecting a change of
federal representatives. There being no such intermediate body between
the State legislatures and the people interested in watching the conduct
of the former, violations of the State constitutions are more likely to
remain unnoticed and unredressed.

2. "This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall
be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law
of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding."

The indiscreet zeal of the adversaries to the Constitution has betrayed
them into an attack on this part of it also, without which it would have
been evidently and radically defective. To be fully sensible of this,
we need only suppose for a moment that the supremacy of the State
constitutions had been left complete by a saving clause in their favor.

In the first place, as these constitutions invest the State legislatures
with absolute sovereignty, in all cases not excepted by the existing
articles of Confederation, all the authorities contained in the
proposed Constitution, so far as they exceed those enumerated in the
Confederation, would have been annulled, and the new Congress would have
been reduced to the same impotent condition with their predecessors.

In the next place, as the constitutions of some of the States do
not even expressly and fully recognize the existing powers of the
Confederacy, an express saving of the supremacy of the former would,
in such States, have brought into question every power contained in the
proposed Constitution.

In the third place, as the constitutions of the States differ much from
each other, it might happen that a treaty or national law, of great and
equal importance to the States, would interfere with some and not with
other constitutions, and would consequently be valid in some of the
States, at the same time that it would have no effect in others.

In fine, the world would have seen, for the first time, a system of
government founded on an inve