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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Government implies the power of making laws. 

 It is essential to the idea of a law that it be attended 

 with a sanction, or, in other words, a penalty or pun- 

 ishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty 

 annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or com- 

 mands which pretend to be laws will in fact amount 

 to nothing more than advice or recommendation. 



" Which is the redress and remedy our hon- 

 orable friends desire to give to this existing evil, 

 and which I see from the debates in the House 

 they are to do by a sort of encyclical letter to 

 their friends, whose excesses give them so 

 much cause for mortification. 



This penalty, whatever it may be, can only bo 

 inflicted in two ways : by the agency of the courts 

 and ministers of justice, or by military force ; by the 

 coercion of the magistracy, or by the coercion 'of 

 arms. The first kind can evidently apply only to 

 men ; the last kind must, of necessity, be employed 

 against bodies politic, or communities, or States. It 

 is evident that there is no process of a court by which 

 the observance of the laws can, in tho last resort ? be 

 enforced. Sentences may be denounced against 

 them for violations of their duty, but these sentences 

 can only be carried into execution by the sword. 



" That, sir, is precisely the principle upon 

 wkich this bill is framed. It does not seek by 

 military power to invade any State, or the 

 right of any State or any man ; it seeks to de- 

 nounce, by a declaration of what shall be a 

 crime, an unconstitutional act ; and it endeav- 

 ors to enforce the penalty imposed upon that 

 by the proper intervention of the judiciary; 

 and then it proceeds to lend the strong arm of 

 the nation to the assistance of that judiciary. 

 But he proceeds, and says again : 



The result of these observations to an intelligent 

 mind must be clearly this, that if it be possible at 

 any rate to construct a federal government capable 

 of regulating the common concerns and preserving 

 the general tranquillity, it must be founded, as to 

 the objects committed to its care, upon the reverse 

 of the principle contended for by the opponents of 

 the proposed constitution. It must carry its agency 

 of the persons of the citizens. It must stand in need 

 of no intermediate legislation, but must itself be em- 

 powered to employ the arm of the ordinary magis- 

 trate to execute its own resolutions. The majesty 

 of the national authority must be manifested through 

 the medium of the courts of justice. The Govern- 

 ment of the Union, like that of each State, must be 

 able to address itself immediately to the hopes and 

 fears of individuals, and to attract to its support 

 those passions which have the strongest influence 

 upon the human heart. It must, in short, possess 

 all the means, and have a right to resort to all the 

 methods of executing the powers with which it is 

 intrusted, that are possessed and exercised by the 

 governments of the particular States. 



" This was the construction of the Constitu- 

 tion as it was by him who largely participated 

 in the framing of it, by him whose counsels 

 alone, through the publications embodied in 

 this book, gave us the Constitution at all. To 

 exercise these high duties is not, as the honor- 

 able Senator from Illinois (Mr. Trumbull) com- 

 plained, to ' enter a State,' or, as a Senator on 

 the other side said, to 'invade' a State; but it 

 is to obey the will of the whole people expressed 

 in the Constitution. The national Government 

 never either enters or invades a State. It is 

 always an<? everywhere in every State already. 



It is among the people, and administered by 

 the officers of the people whose Government 

 it is. 



" This is not all as to the nature of this Gov- 

 ernment. It is a Government, as our brethren 

 on the other side have probably learned by 

 this time, of separated powers, and among 

 those is the department of the judiciary, to 

 whose judgments, when they are on their side, 

 they advise us with great solicitude to bow, 

 and we always do. 



u Now, Mr. President, I think it must be 

 admitted I had supposed that events had set- 

 tled it until I heard this debate that this 

 Constitution, be it much or little (for I am not 

 now on the point of its extent), if it gives us 

 authority, or if it withholds it, is to the extent 

 of its scope a Constitution of the people, and 

 that it brings the people, in respect to every 

 right which it secures to them, into direct 

 communication with that Government which 

 exists by the Constitution, and which only and 

 solely has the paramount power to enforce it. 

 The governments of the States cannot finally 

 or independently enforce or decline to enforce 

 the Constitution of the United States ; it is not 

 their Constitution in the sense that the consti- 

 tution of the State is. It is the Constitution 

 of the whole people as a national body, and 

 the requirements of which they cannot finally 

 pass upon ; and therefore whatever rights are 

 secured to the people under it must be guar- 

 anteed to them and made effectual for them at 

 last through the instrumentality of the national 

 Government, and through no other. 



"I need scarcely occupy your time, Mr. 

 President, and that of the Senate, in showing 

 how perfectly the authority of Congress to 

 execute this Constitution, and to choose the 

 means by which it shall be executed, is recog- 

 nized by the judicial department of the Gov- 

 ernment. 



" It is a delusion, therefore, to imagine tl 

 at any time and in any way the faculties ant 

 functions enumerated in this Constitution, 

 which have been given to the United States or 

 have been denied to the States, are to be car- 

 ried out solely through secondary means. 

 Wherever the Constitution imposes a duty or 

 a prohibition, and it becomes necessary to 

 make it effectual, the Government always has, 

 and it always must, short of warfare, go directly 

 to the thing itself, take hold of the citizen. 



" This Constitution has always been a Con- 

 stitution of the people, and has in a thousand 

 ways provided for the protection of the people, 

 imposing duties, guaranteeing rights, regulating 

 affairs, prohibiting action to States, and so it 

 has, in a great variety of instances in tho course 

 of these powers and prohibitions, been applied 

 to the people directly to effect its purposes, 

 and to defend its powers, and wherever and 

 whenever that occasion has arisen it has al- 

 ways been done precisely upon the principles 

 that this bill contains, that of dealing with the 

 people, that of enacting laws, and never that 



