not to secure the government and rights of the states against usurpations and abuses on the part of the United States, the final resort within the purview of the Constitution, lies in an amendment of the Constitution, according to a process applicable by the states.

"And in the event of a failure of every constitutional resort, and an accumulation of usurpations and abuses, rendering passive obedience and non-resistance a greater evil than resistance and revolution, there can remain but one resort, the last of all-an appeal from the cancelled obligations of the constitutional compact, to original rights and the law of self-preservation. This is the ultima ratio under all governments, whether consolidated, confederated, or a compound of both; and it cannot be doubted, that a single member of the Union, in the extremity supposed, but in that only, would have a right, as an extra and ultra-constitutional right, to make the appeal.

"This brings us to the expedient lately advanced, which claims for a single state a right to appeal against an exercise of power by the government of the United States decided by the states to be unconstitutional, to the parties to the constitutional compact; the decision of the state to have the effect of nullifying the act of the Government of the United States, unless the decision of the state be reversed by three fourths of the parties.

"The distinguished names and high authorities which appear to have asserted and given a practical scope to this doctrine, entitle it to a respect which it might be difficult otherwise to feel for it.

"If the doctrine were to be understood as requiring the three fourths of the states to sustain, instead of that proportion to reverse, the decision of the appealing state, the decision to be without effect during the appeal, it would be sufficient to remark, that this extra-constitutional course might well give way to that marked out by the Constitution, which authorizes two thirds of the states to institute, and three fourths to effectuate, an amendment of the Constitution, establishing a permanent rule of the highest authority, in place of an irregular precedent of construction only.

"But it is understood that the nullifying doctrine imports that the decision of the state is to be presumed valid, and that it overrules the law of the United States, unless overruled by three fourths of the states.

"Can more be necessary to demonstrate the inadmissibility of such a doctrine, than that it puts it in the power of the smallest fraction over one fourth of the United States, that is, of seven states out of twenty-four, to give the law and even the Constitution to seventeen states, each of the seventeen having, as parties to the Constitution, an equal right with each of the seven, to expound it, and to insist on the exposition? That the seven might, in particular instances, be right, and the seventeen wrong, is more than possible. But to establish a positive and permanent rule giving such a power, to such a minority, over such a majority, would overturn the first principle of free government, and in practice necessarily overturn the government itself.

"It is to be recollected that the Constitution was proposed to the people of the states as a whole, and unanimously adopted by the states as

a whole, it being a part of the Constitution that not less than three fourths of the states should be competent to make any alterations in what had been unanimously agreed to. So great is the caution on this point, that in two cases where peculiar interests were at stake, a proportion even of three fourths is distrusted, and unanimity required to make an alteration.

"When the Constitution was adopted as a whole, it is certain that there were many parts, which, if separately proposed, would have been promptly rejected. It is far from impossible that every part of a Constitution might be rejected by a majority, and yet, taken together as a whole, be unanimously accepted. Free Constitutions will rarely, if ever, be formed, without reciprocal concessions; without articles conditioned on and balancing each other. Is there a Constitution of a single state out of the twenty-four, that would bear the experiment of having its component parts submitted to the people and separately decided on?

"What the fate of the Constitution of the United States would be, if a small proportion of the states could expunge parts of it particularly valued by a large majority, it can have but one answer.

"The difficulty is not removed by limiting the doctrine to cases of construction. How many cases of that sort, involving cardinal provisions of the Constitution have occurred? How many now exist? How many may hereafter spring up? How many might be ingeniously created, if entitled to the privilege of a decision in the mode proposed?

"It is certain that the principle of that mode would not reach further than is contemplated. If a single state can of right require three fourths of its co-states to overrule its exposition of the Constitution, because that proportion is authorized to amend it, would the plea be less plausible that, as the Constitution was unanimously established, it ought to be unanimously expounded?

"The reply to all such suggestions seems to be unavoidable and irresistible; that the Constitution is a compact, that its text is to be expounded according to the provisions for expounding it—making a part of the compact; and that none of the parties can rightfully renounce the expounding provision more than any other part. When such a right accrues, as may accrue, it must grow out of abuses of the compact releasing the sufferers from their fealty to it.

"In favor of the nullifying claim for the states, individually, it appears, as you observe, that the proceedings of the Legislature of Virginia, in '98 and '99, against the Alien and Sedition Acts, are much dwelt upon.

"It may often happen, as experience proves, that erroneous constructions, not anticipated, may not be sufficiently guarded against, in the language used; and it is due to the distinguished individuals, who have misconceived the intention of those proceedings, to suppose that the meaning of the Legislature, though well comprehended at the time, may not now be obvious to those unacquainted with the contemporary indications and impressions.

"But it is believed that by keeping in view the distinction between

the governments of the states, and the states in which they were parties to the Constitution; between the rights of the parties, in their concurrent and in their individual capacities; between the several modes and objects of interposition against the abuses of power, and especially between interpositions within the purview of the Constitution, and interpositions appealing from the Constitution to the rights of nature paramount to all constitutions; with an attention, always of explanatory use, to the views and arguments which were combated, the Resolutions of Virginia, as vindicated in the Report on them, will be found entitled to an exposition, showing a consistency in their parts, and an inconsistency of the whole, with the doctrine under consideration.

"That the Legislature could not have intended to sanction such a doctrine, is to be inferred from the debates in the House of Delegates, and from the address of the two Houses to their constituents, on the subject of the Resolutions. The tenor of the debates, which were ably conducted, and are understood to have been revised for the press by most, if not all, of the speakers, discloses no reference whatever to a constitutional right in an individual state, to arrest by force the operation of a law of the United States. Concert among the states for redress against the Alien and Sedition Laws, as acts of usurped power, was a leading sentiment ; and the attainment of a concert, the immediate object of the course adopted by the legislature, which was that of inviting the other states 'to concur in declaring the acts to be unconstitutional, and to co-operate by the necessary and proper measures in maintaining unimpaired the authorities, rights, and liberties reserved to the states respectively, and to the people.' That by the necessary and proper measures to be concurrently and co-operatively taken, were meant measures known to the Constitution, particularly the ordinary control of the people and legislatures of the states, over the Government of the United States, cannot be doubted; and the interposition of this control, as the event showed, was equal to the occasion.

"It is worthy of remark, and explanatory of the intentions of the Legislature, that the words 'not law, but utterly null, void, and of no force or effect,' which had followed, in one of the resolutions, the word unconstitutional,' were struck out by common consent. Though the words were in fact but synonymous with unconstitutional;' yet to guard against a misunderstanding of this phrase as more than declaratory of opinion, the word 'unconstitutional' alone was retained, as not liable to that danger.

"The published Address of the Legislature to the people, their constituents, affords another conclusive evidence of its views. The address warns them against the encroaching spirit of the General Government, argues the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, points to other instances in which the constitutional limits had been overleaped ; dwells upon the dangerous mode of deriving power by implication; and in general presses the necessity of watching over the consolidating tendency of the Federal policy. But nothing is said that can be understood to look to means of maintaining the rights of the states, beyond the regu lar ones, within the forms of the Constitution.

"If any further lights on the subject could be needed, a very strong one is reflected in the answers to the resolutions, by the states which protested against them. The main objection of these, beyond a few general complaints of the inflammatory tendency of the resolutions, was directed against the assumed authority of a State Legislature to declare a law of the United States unconstitutional, which they pronounced an unwarrantable interference with the exclusive jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States. Had the resolutions been regarded as avowing and maintaining a right, in an individual state, to arrest, by force, the execution of a law of the United States, it must be presumed that it would have been a conspicuous object of their denunciation.

"With cordial salutations,

"JAMES MADISON."

23

JAMES MONROE.

THE early years of the life of JAMES MONROE, fifth President of the United States, were passed at the place of his nativity, on the banks of the Potomac, in the county of Westmoreland, in what was, at that period, called the colony of Virginia. It is somewhat remarkable that this state, where the traveller thinks that he beholds the feudal splendor of a former age, and is entertained with a magnificent hospitality, to be found in no other part of the union, and where, in the language of the British Spy, "here and there a stately aristocratic palace strikes the view, while all around, for many miles, no other buildings are to be seen but the little smoky huts and log cabins of poor, laborious, ignorant tenants," should have produced four of the chief magistrates of this republic. Old Virginia, besides the crown of her glory, Washington-her Jefferson, her Madison, and her Monroe-enrols upon her archives the name of another illustrious and venerable patriarch of freedom, which is a consecrated word upon the lips of every lover of his country. Who would not write with me, on the scroll which American liberty displays to the world, under the name of General Washington, that of his biographer? Venerated by all men, of all parties, is the present Chief Justice, John Marshall.

JAMES MONROE was born in September, 1759. His ancestors had for many years resided in the province in which he was born, and one of them was among the first patentees of that province. That this ancestor possessed some of those noble and generous qualities of the heart which distinguished his descendant, will be apparent from the following anecdote. At some warmly contested election, when Madison and Monroe were opposing candidates, the friends of both parties used the most strenuous exertions to bring every voter to the polls. When, by reasons of poverty, old age, or bodily infirmities, any voters were unable to be present, they were sent for and brought in carts and wagons, to the place of the elec tion. The friends of Mr. Madison had succeeded in transporting from a considerable distance a very aged man. He was set down at the building in which the votes were to be cast, and soon began to hear some conver sation about the candidates. The name of James Monroe at last struck his ear, and he inquired of the speaker if the man whom he had mentioned was the son of that Monroe who lived and died in the province many years before. Upon being informed that James was a grandson of that individual, the old man instantly exclaimed, "Then I will vote, for James Monroe. His grandfather befriended me when I first came into the country, fed me, and clothed me, and I lived in his house. I do not know James Madison. I will vote for James Monroe!" So Mr. Monroe