f
Georgia over the country and people of the Cherokees, the constitution,
laws, and treaties, of the United States, were _quoad hoc_ set aside.
They were chaff before the wind. In pursuance of these laws of Georgia,
a Cherokee Indian is prosecuted for the murder of another Indian,
before a state court of Georgia, tried by a jury of white men, and
sentenced to death. He applies to a chief justice of the Court of the
United States, who issues an injunction to the Governor and executive
officers of Georgia, upon the appeal to the laws and treaties of the
United States. The Governor of Georgia refuses obedience to the
injunction, and the Legislature pass resolutions that they will not
appear to answer before the Supreme Court of the United States. The
constitution, the laws, and treaties, of the United States, are
prostrate in the State of Georgia. Is there any remedy for this state
of things? None; because the State of Georgia is in league with the
Executive of the United States, who will not take care that the laws
be faithfully executed. A majority of both houses of Congress sustain
this neglect and violation of duty. There is no harmony in the
government of the Union. The arm refuses its office. 'The whole head is
sick, and the whole heart faint.' This example of the State of Georgia
will be imitated by other states, and with regard to other national
interests,--perhaps the tariff, more probably the public lands. As the
Executive and Legislature now fail to sustain the Judiciary, it is not
improbable cases may arise in which the Judiciary may fail to sustain
them. The Union is in the most imminent danger of dissolution from the
old, inherent vice of confederacies, anarchy in the members. To this
end one third of the people is perverted, one third slumbers, and the
rest wring their hands, with unavailing lamentations, in the foresight
of evils they cannot avert."

On the 4th of July, 1831, Mr. Adams delivered an oration before the
inhabitants of the town of Quincy, in which he controverted the
doctrine of Blackstone, the great commentator upon the laws of England,
who maintained "that there is, and must be, in all forms of government,
however they began, and by what right soever they subsist, a supreme,
irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which the _jura
summi imperii_, or _the rights of sovereignty_, reside." "It is not
true," Mr. Adams remarks, "that there _must_ reside in all governments
an absolute, u