t that all
constitutional power vested in the several states to resist Federal
aggression should be actively employed. That the states had the power
under the Constitution to check the general government when it attempted
to overstep the limits set to its authority was necessarily implied in
the fact that our system of government was federal and not national.
His argument proceeded on the theory encouraged by the framers of the
Constitution that the general government and the state governments were
coordinate. "The idea of coordinates," he tells us, "excludes that of
superior and subordinate, and necessarily implies that of equality. But
to give either the right, not only to judge of the extent of its own
powers, but, also, of that of its coordinate, and to enforce its
decision against it, would be, not only to destroy the equality between
them, but to deprive one of an attribute--appertaining to all
governments--to judge, in the first instance, of the extent of its
powers. The effect would be to raise one from an equal to a superior,
and to reduce the other from an equal to a subordinate."[140]

From this it would follow that neither should have the exclusive right
to judge of its own powers--that each should have a negative on the acts
of the others. That this was the intention of the framers of the
Constitution he argues from the fact that all efforts in the Convention
to give the general government a negative on the acts of the states were
unsuccessful. The efforts to confer this power, he contends, were made
because it was seen that in the absence of such a provision the states
would have a negative on the acts of the general government. The failure
of these efforts in the Convention was due, he claims, to the fact that
the members of that body wished to make the general government and the
state governments coordinate, instead of subordinating the latter to the
former as the advocates of a national government desired. The fact upon
which Calhoun based this contention would seem to justify his
conclusion; but if we consult the debates which took place in that body,
it is easily seen that the refusal of the Convention to incorporate such
a provision in the Constitution can not be ascribed to any hostility on
the part of that body to national government. In fact, as hereinbefore
shown, it was for purely practical reasons that they rejected all
proposals which contemplated the recognition in the Constitution itself
of