ent, like
every other, must judge, in the first instance, of the proper exercise
of its powers, and its constituents in the last. If the federal
government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make
a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must
appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to
redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest
and prudence justify. The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light,
must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is
founded. Suppose, by some forced constructions of its authority (which,
indeed, cannot easily be imagined), the Federal legislature should
attempt to vary the law of descent in any State, would it not be evident
that, in making such an attempt, it had exceeded its jurisdiction, and
infringed upon that of the State? Suppose, again, that upon the pretense
of an interference with its revenues, it should undertake to abrogate
a landtax imposed by the authority of a State; would it not be equally
evident that this was an invasion of that concurrent jurisdiction in
respect to this species of tax, which its Constitution plainly supposes
to exist in the State governments? If there ever should be a doubt on
this head, the credit of it will be entirely due to those reasoners who,
in the imprudent zeal of their animosity to the plan of the convention,
have labored to envelop it in a cloud calculated to obscure the plainest
and simplest truths.

But it is said that the laws of the Union are to be the SUPREME LAW of
the land. But what inference can be drawn from this, or what would they
amount to, if they were not to be supreme? It is evident they would
amount to nothing. A LAW, by the very meaning of the term, includes
supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are
bound to observe. This results from every political association. If
individuals enter into a state of society, the laws of that society
must be the supreme regulator of their conduct. If a number of political
societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which
the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted to it by its
constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and
the individuals of whom they are composed. It would otherwise be a mere
treaty, dependent on the good faith of the parties, and not a government,
which is only another word for POLITICAL POWER A