The states are unquestionably sovereign "so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law"; but the state legislatures are not sovereign over the people. On the contrary, the people, in framing the Constitution, chose to impose certain restrictions on state sovereignty; and whatever the wisdom of such restraints, they exist, and are binding upon every state.

To apply the South Carolina doctrine Webster held to be impossible. "In Carolina, the tariff is a palpable, deliberate usurpation; Carolina, therefore, may nullify it, and refuse to pay the duties. In Pennsylvania, it is both clearly constitutional and highly expedient; and there the duties are to be paid.... Does not this approach absurdity?" New England, in the days of its bitterest opposition to the embargo, never for a moment thought of adopting such a course as South Carolina now soberly recommends; and the embargo, Webster insisted, was a greater grievance even than the tariff.

Further, the people have not only established the federal government, but they have also provided, in the Constitution itself, "a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for settling questions of constitutional law." The Constitution declares that "the Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof. shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary not

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withstanding." The judicial power of the United States is, further, declared to extend to all cases in law and equity arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States. To give effect to these provisions, a system of federal courts has been established, with a right of appeal on all questions of constitutional power to the supreme court. With the decisions of the courts the Constitution gives the states no right to interfere. Should the Constitution, or the interpretation of it, be unacceptable to the people, they may amend the Constitution at their pleasure; but the only result of such attempt at amendment as the South Carolina doctrine contemplates must be "direct collision between force and force," which is treason. "It is rather an awkward business," Webster remarked, grimly, "this dying without touching the ground. After all, that is a sort of hemp tax worse than any part of the tariff."

The splendid peroration-incomparably the grandest flight of American eloquence was argument, too. Webster had attacked Hayne's position as unconstitutional, incapable of practical application, and revolutionary. He now stung his adversary to the quick by exposing the covert trend to disunion. For himself, at least, there should be "no cool weighing of the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder"; no accustomed hanging over "the precipice of disunion" in the effort "to fathom the depths of the abyss below"; no reliance upon counsellors "whose thoughts should be bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed." That for which he lived should be "liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable"; and it was that motto that he could wish last to look upon when he came to die.

Webster had accomplished his purpose. Hayne, in his second reply, January 27,1 furnished the explicit statements which Webster had aimed to draw out. The basis of his argument-far superior, in arrangement and force, to that which he had previously offered is the assertion that, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, each state "was an independent sovereignty, possessing all the rights and powers appertaining to independent nations"; and that after the Constitution was formed the states remained "equally sovereign and independent as to all powers not expressly delegated to the Federal Government." The Union, therefore, is a compact between sovereign states; and since there is no common superior, each party to the compact is the rightful judge of violations of its provisions. The claim that the Constitution gives to the federal government the right of judging conclusively of the extent of its authority was emphatically denied. Questions of sovereignty "are not the proper sub1 Debates of Congress, VI., 82-92.

jects of judicial investigation," and in any case are not within the constitutional jurisdiction of the supreme court.

The right of interposition, accordingly, is "as full and complete as it was before the Constitution was formed." The exercise of the right does not, as Webster had contended, necessarily involve war, since the central government is bound to respect the decision of the "creating power "-namely, threefourths of the states. The burden of securing an amendment of the Constitution, however, ought not to be devolved upon a state, if for no other reason than the small likelihood of obtaining a two-thirds vote of Congress or a three-fourths vote of the states against a proposition to which Congress was strongly committed. It was, rather, the duty of the federal government "to acquiesce in the solemn decision of a State," to the extent of appealing to the people for an amendment to the Constitution, and of refraining, in the mean time, from coercion. Interposition, in short, was a peaceful remedy as well as a constitutional one.

Webster, in his "second reply to Hayne,"1 made short work of Hayne's constitutional argument. If the federal government is the result of a compact between states, it cannot be also one of the parties to the compact, as Hayne had implied. But even conceding that the federal government is the result of a compact, one of the powers, nevertheless, 1 Debates of Congress, VI., 92.

given to it by that compact is that of interpreting finally the Constitution. In the provision that the Constitution and the laws of Congress shall be the supreme law of the land, and that the judicial power of the United States shall extend to every case arising under that supreme law, the federal government is given, in express terms, the right of final judgment on its own acts. And even were the right of interpretation reserved to the states, it would still be necessary that they agree as to the manner of exercising it. One state alone could not construe or alter either Constitution or law.

But the Constitution is not a compact. The instrument itself declares that it was ordained and established by the people of the United States. Hayne had objected that "the people of the United States" meant no more than the people of the several states, taken collectively. The reply was that "it is in this their collective capacity, it is as all the people of the United States, that they establish the Constitution." Hayne's contention applied to the Articles of Confederation, which was a compact between states; "he speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789." But the government established by the Constitution, expressly designed to correct the defects of the Confederation, is "a popular government, founded in popular election, directly responsible to the people themselves." When the people become dissatisfied with the distribution of powers, they can alter it; "but until they shall alter it, it