ing is, and the points upon which they have turned. When we come to
the consideration of the course of politics in the United States we
shall see the answers that history has given to them.

The government of the United States is the judge of its own powers, for
it is in its own supreme judicial tribunal that the constitutionality of
both State and Federal laws is finally determined. More than once has a
practical answer been demanded to the question What is to be done by a
State or States when, in their estimation, the National Government has
transcended its powers and legislated in an unconstitutional manner?
Obedience, nullification, or, in the last resort, secession from the
Union, have been the various alternatives that have offered themselves
to the States. Different views of the nature of our Union have sustained
the propriety of the selection of different ones of these alternatives.

According to the nullification theory, the constitution is held to be of
the nature of a compact between the States as one party and the Federal
Government as the other; and that, as in all contracts, if the
agreements contained therein are broken by the one party, the other
party has the right to refuse its assent thereto. Therefore, if the
United States government attempts the exercise of powers not granted in
the compact, the States have the right to interpose the "rightful
remedy" of "nullification." That is to say, that each State has the
right to determine for itself when an unwarranted power has been assumed
by the general government, and in such a case to declare the obnoxious
law null and of no force within her own boundaries.

In considering the question of nullification, it is necessary to
distinguish between the theory or rather method of nullification
propounded by Madison and Jefferson in the Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions, from that of Calhoun brought forward at the time of South
Carolina's resistance to, and attempted nullification of, the Tariff
laws of 1828, and 1832. In the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions the
Alien and Sedition Acts were solemnly declared to be unconstitutional,
that the Union was a compact, and the States had the right to interpose
the remedy of nullification; but open resistance was not proposed. By
the Jeffersonian theory, it was proposed to obtain the opinion of
three-fourths of the States that the acts were unconstitutional, and
thus to "nullify" them after the manner of a constitutiona