are not subject to this government. The people are subject to both governments. . . . The appellate jurisdiction conferred by the Constitution on the Supreme Court is merely authority to revise the decisions of the inferior courts of the United States. . . . Appellate jurisdiction signifies judicial power over the decisions of inferior tribunals of the same sovereignty. . . . Congress is not authorized to make the supreme court or any other court of a State an inferior court. . . . The inferior courts spoken of in the Constitution are manifestly to be held by federal judges. The judicial power to be exercised is the judicial power of the United States; the errors to be corrected are those of that judicial power; and there can be no inferior courts exercising the judicial power of the United States other than those constituted and ordained by Congress. . . . If it had been intended to give appellate jurisdiction over the state courts, the proper expressions would have been used. There is not a word in the Constitution that goes to set up the federal judiciary above the state judiciary. . . . Can it be believed that it was meant that the greatest, the most consolidating of all the powers of this government, should pass by an unnecessary implication?"

In both the cases of Cohens v. Virginia and of Martin v. Hunter's Lessee the Supreme Court flatly repudiated this reasoning. In the latter it declared: "It is the case . . . not the court, that gives the jurisdiction. The courts of the United States can, without question, revise the proceedings of the executive and legislative authorities of the States, and if they are found to be contrary to the Consti

tution may declare them to be of no legal validity. Surely, the exercise of the same right over judicial tribunals is not a higher or more dangerous act of sovereign power."

In the opinion rendered in the case of Cohens v. Virginia, in which the whole question had been reargued, speaking with reference to the attempt of Virginia to punish an individual for committing an act permitted by a federal statute, Marshall asserted the sovereignty of the National Government in the following emphatic language. "If it could be doubted," he declared, "whether from its nature it [the National Government] were not supreme in all cases where it is empowered to act, that doubt would be removed by the declaration that 'this Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.' This is the authoritative language of the American people, and, if the gentlemen please, of the American States. . . . The people made the Constitution and the people can unmake it. . . . But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any subdivision of them. The attempts of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated the power of repelling it. . . . The framers of the Constitution were indeed unable to make any provisions

which should protect that instrument against a general combination of the States, or of the people for its destruction; and, conscious of this inability, they have not made the attempt. But they were able to provide against the operation of measures adopted in any one State, whose tendency might be to arrest the execution of the laws; and this it was the part of wisdom to attempt. We think they have attempted it."

In 1824, in Osborn v. Bank of the United States (9 Wh., 738), the attempt of Ohio to tax the federal bank was declared unconstitutional. In 1829, in Weston v. Charleston (2 Pet., 449), a municipal tax on stock of the United States held by inhabitants of the city of Charleston was held improper. In 1824, in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden (9 Wh., 1), was begun that long line of decisions which has established the power of the United States to regulate interstate commerce free from state interference-an authority the exercise of which has done so much to increase the actual power and influence of the National Government. In this case a law of the State of New York I was held void.

In 1823 a law of Kentucky was held of no force by the federal court (Green v. Biddle, 8 Wh., 1), and in 1830 a law of Missouri received similar treatment (Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet., 410).

We may stop now for a moment to summarize the light that forty years of actual experience had thrown upon the question as to the character of the General Government established in 1789. Certainly it must be granted that the officially declared views and the realized facts had demonstrated the absolute sover

eignty of the federal power so conclusively as properly to place that question outside of the sphere of debatable political theory. Not only had the supremacy of the General Government in the exercise of its express and implied powers been stated and enforced in the most unqualified manner, but, more important still, and in itself practically decisive of the question as to the location of sovereignty in our federal system, the principle had been authoritatively asserted and maintained that the settlement of all disputes as to the relative competences of the state and federal governments, whether originating in the state or federal courts, was placed finally and absolutely in the hands of the supreme judicial organ of the federal power. The reasoning and the conclusions of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions had been repudiated by the other States, and in one form or another the federal supremacy had been vindicated as against the efforts at interference, resistance, or protests of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New York, South Carolina, and Massachusetts.1

The only instance up to this time in which the federal power had been successfully resisted by the authorities of a State was that in which Georgia had refused, and had not been compelled, to be guided by federal treaties and law governing the rights of the Creek and Cherokee Indians living within her borders.

1 Massachusetts' protests against the Embargo Act were disregarded. In M'Kim v. Vorhies, 7 Cr., 279, the attempt of a Kentucky court to enjoin the enforcement of a judgment of a federal court was repelled.

But this successful resistance to federal law was rendered possible not because of the actual or legal inability of the National Government to compel obedience to its commands, but because of the refusal of the President to take the steps necessary for the enforcement of the orders of the federal courts.

In 1828 was enacted by Congress the Tariff Act which received the name "Tariff of Abominations" and which was considered extremely oppressive by the Southern States. The dissatisfaction thus aroused caused numerous threats of resistance and even of disunion. In December of 1828 the legislature of South Carolina adopted a declaration of principles, or "Exposition" as it was called, which had been written by John C. Calhoun, and which explicitly announced the nullification doctrine. In several of the other States of the South the same doctrine was announced. In 1830 came the famous debate in the United States Senate between Webster and Hayne. In 1832 the people of South Carolina assembled in convention and issued "an ordinance to nullify certain acts of the Congress of the United States purporting to be laws." This ordinance went on to declare that "it shall not be lawful for any of the constituted authorities, whether of this State or of the United States, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the said acts within the limits of this State," and concluding with the statement that "we do further declare that we will not submit to the application of force on the part of the federal government to reduce this State to obedience; but that we will consider the passage by Congress of any act authorizing the