instrument. The right in question is supposed to belong to the States, only because it is an incident of their sovereignty, which the Constitution has not taken away. The author, it is presumed, could scarcely have failed to perceive the difference of the two propositions, nor could he have been unconscious that they did not depend upon the same course of investigation or reasoning. And it is not true, so far as my information extends, that any political party has ever asserted, as a general proposition, that, in construing the Constitution, there is no common umpire. Cases have already been stated, in which the supreme court is universally admitted to be the common umpire, and others will be stated when we come more directly to that part of our subject. In the broad sense, then, in which the author lays down the proposition, it has never been contended for by any political party whatever. Neither is it true, as he is pleased to assert, that any political party has ever supposed, that "each department of the government of each State" had a right to "judge for itself, of the powers, rights and duties, arising under" the Constitution. By the word "judge," he must be understood to mean decide finally; and, in this sense, I venture to affirm that no political party, nor political partizan, even in the wildest dream of political phrensy, has ever entertained the absurd notion here attributed to them. It is difficult [ *70 ]*to suppose that the author could have been uninformed of the fact, that nothing short of the power of all the State, acting through its own constituted authorities, has ever been deemed of the least force in this matter. The better and more prevalent opinion is, that a State cannot properly so act, except by a convention called for that express purpose. This was the course pursued by South Carolina; but in the case of the alien and sedition laws, Virginia acted through her ordinary legislature. As to this matter, however, the legislature was very properly considered as representing the power of the whole State.
Thus, in the short paragraph above quoted, the author has fallen into three most remarkable errors, proving that he has, in the strangest way imaginable, misunderstood the principles which he attempted to explain. The young and plastic minds to which he addressed himself, with the professed object of instructing them in the truths of constitutional interpretation, will
