334 BURR— THE TREATY-MAKING POWER [April 20, 



There is nothing surprising in this unanimity of contemporary 

 interpretation. Every one knew that the great majority of the 

 nation concurred in the necessity of making treaty provisions 

 supreme over the caprice of State legislatures: the method to be 

 adopted had been an object of controversy. Early, in the consti- 

 tutional convention, as we have seen,^'" a resolution had been pre- 

 sented granting to Congress the power, inter alia. " to negative all 

 laws passed by the several States contravening in the opinion of 

 the national legislature the Articles of Union or any treaties sub- 

 sisting under the authority of the Union." This resolution had 

 been defeated and the following substituted and adopted : 



"Resolved, that the legislative acts of the United States, made by virtue 

 and in pursuance of the Articles of union, and all treaties made and ratified 

 under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the 

 respective States, as far as those acts, or treaties, shall relate to the said 

 States, or their citizens and inhabitants ; — and that the judiciaries of the sev- 

 eral States shall be bound thereby in their decisions — anything in the respec- 

 tive laws of the individual States to the contrary, notwithstanding.""' 



This resolution, modified considerably as to style and somewhat ex- 

 tended in substance, became the clause in the Sixth Article of the 

 Constitution. In Professor Farrand's book on " The Record of the 

 Federal Convention" are to be found the memoranda of the com- 

 mittee of detail, of which Professor Farrand says : 



" With a few additions from other sources, it is possible to present a 

 nearly complete series of documents representing the various stages of the 

 work of the Committee.'"" 



Among these documents is the following tentative provision after- 

 wards embodied in the Sixth Article of the Constitution : 



" All laws of a particular State, repugnant hereto, shall be void, and in 

 the decision thereon, which shall be vested in the supreme judiciary, all inci- 

 dents without which the general principles cannot be satisfied shall be con- 

 sidered as involved in the general principle.""" 



Those who opposed the adoption of the treaty-making power in its 

 extent and supremacy, and those who favored it, united in the 

 recognition of the purpose, meaning, and efifect of the language 



''^ Supra, pp. 17-19- '"Ibid., p. 129. 



"'Farrand, Vol. II., pp. 28-9. ™ Ibid., p. 144. 



