131] CONTROVERSY WITH GEORGIA 43 were sent to other States, and were indorsed by the Legislature of Connecticut in the subjoined report and resolutions. In transmitting the same to the Leg- islature of Massachusetts, Jan. 9, 1832, Governor Levi Lincoln commented on the situation at length, noting that "the recent measures which have been proposed in some of our sister States, can be viewed only with alarm (or the very existence of the Republic, . . their inevitable tendency is to division and separation." (Resolves of Mass., 1832, 50-52.) The Legislatures of Pennsylvania and New Jersey also passed in 1 83 1 resolutions in support of the supremacy and integrity of the Federal Judiciary. [Session Laws of Penna., 1830-31, 505; Annual Register, 1830-31, 336-339; Ibid., 1831-32, 250.)
61. Report and Resolutions of Connecticut.
May Session, 1831.Your committee have also had under consideration certain
resolutions of the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, relative to the judicial power of the United States — a subject of sufficient importance to justify a more extended notice.
At a period when, in some portions of our country, a disposition is manifested to array the jealousies of the people against the judicial departtnent of the government of the United States, when executive officers are instructed, in all the formality of legislative enactment, to disregard the legal precepts of the Supreme Court of the United States — it well becomes those who regard a dissolution of our Union as one of the most dreadful of political evils, to interpose a mild, but firm expression of their opinion. The people by their sovereign pleasure, created by the same act the executive, legislative and judicial departments of the federal government. The inefficiency of the old confederation to secure respect and obedience, taught them the necessity of so organizing the federal government, that it could lay its hands on individuals, and thus directly enforce the laws of the Union, and protect those acting under them from injury or interruption, by the laws of any one of the states. It was the force of external circumstances only that gave to the recommendations of the old congress the authority of laws. When the outward pressure was removed, the Union was practically dissolved, and anarchy ensued. Without the judicial department, the Congress of the United States would now be but an assemblage of embassadors, whose efficiency would begin and end in advisory consulta-
