Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/58

prove ineffectual against dangers to the equality and essential rights of the States, the parties to it, these States have the sole right to interfere for arresting the progress of the evil and for maintaining within their respective limits the rights and liberties appertaining to them. The interposition of a State in its sovereign character, as a party to the constitutional compact, was the only means furnished by the system to resist encroachments and prevent entire absorption of the powers which were purposely withheld from the general government. Madison said: "Where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given by each in its sovereign capacity. The States, then, being parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal above their authority to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated, and consequently that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition." An assemblage of citizens of Boston in Faneuil Hall, in 1809, state, in a celebrated memorial, that they looked only to the state legislatures, who were competent to devise relief against the unconstitutional acts of the general government. "That your power is adequate to that object is evident from the organization of the confederacy. " How the States were to exercise this high power of interposition, which constitutes so essential a portion of their reserved rights that it cannot be delegated without an entire surrender of their sovereignty and converting our system from a federal into a consolidated government, is a question that the States only are competent to determine. The reservation of powers is