overnment adopt for the enforcement of obedience to its
demands? Either an army sent into the heart of a delinquent State, or
blocking up its ports. Have we lived to this, then, that, in order to
suppress and exclude tyranny, it is necessary to render the most
affectionate friends the most bitter enemies, set the father against the
son, and make the brother slay the brother? Is this the happy expedient
that is to preserve liberty? Will it not destroy it? If an army be once
introduced to force us, if once marched into Virginia, figure to
yourselves what the dreadful consequence will be: the most lamentable
civil war must ensue."[101]

We have seen already how vehemently the idea of even _judicial_ coercion
was repudiated by Hamilton, Marshall, and others. The suggestion of
_military_ coercion was uniformly treated, as in the above extracts,
with still more abhorrence. No principle was more fully and firmly
settled on the highest authority than that, under our system, there
could be no coercion of a State.

Mr. Webster, in his elaborate speech of February 16, 1833, arguing
throughout against the sovereignty of the States, and in the course of
his argument sadly confounding the ideas of the Federal Constitution and
the Federal Government, as he confounds the sovereign people of the
States with the State governments, says: "The States _can not_ omit to
appoint Senators and electors. It is not a matter resting in State
discretion or State pleasure.... No member of a State Legislature can
refuse to proceed, at the proper time, to elect Senators to Congress, or
to provide for the choice of electors of President and Vice-President,
any more than the members can refuse, when the appointed day arrives, to
meet the members of the other House, to count the votes for those
officers and ascertain who are chosen."[102] This was before the
invention in 1877 of an electoral commission to relieve Congress of its
constitutional duty to count the vote. Mr. Hamilton, on the contrary,
fresh from the work of forming the Constitution, and familiar with its
principles and purposes, said: "It is certainly true that the State
Legislatures, by forbearing the appointment of Senators, may destroy the
national Government."[103]

It is unnecessary to discuss the particular question on which these two
great authorities are thus directly at issue. I do not contend that the
State Legislatures, of their own will, have a right to forego the
performance