Constitutional Doctrines of Webster, Hayne and Calhoun (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Constitutional Doctrines of Webster, Hayne and Calhoun

But suppose in this the Committee should be mistaken, - still there exists a sufiicient security. As high as this right of interposition on the part of a State may be regarded in relation to the General Government, the con stitutional compact provides a remedy against its abuse. There is a higher power, - placed above all by the consent of all, - the creating and preserving power of the system, - to be exercised by three-fourths of the States, - and which, un der the character of the amending power, can modify the whole system at pleasure, - and to the acts of which none can object. Admit, then, the power in question to belong to the States, - and admit its liability to abuse, - and what are the utmost consequences, but to create a presumption against the constitutionality of the power exercised by the General Gov emment, - which, if it be well founded, must compel them to abandon it; or, if not, to renounce the difficulty by obtaining the contested power in the form of an amendment to the Constitution. If, on an appeal for this purpose, the deci sion be favorable to the General Government, a disputed power will be converted into an expressly granted power but, on the other hand, if it be adverse, the refusal to grant will be tantamount to an inhibition of its exercise; and thus, in either case, the controversy will be determined. And ought not a sovereign State, as a party to the constitutional com pact, and as the guardian of her citizens and her peculiar in terests, to have the power in question? Without it, the amending power must become obsolete, and the Constitu tion, through the exercise of construction, in the end utterly subverted.

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