The Examiner, and Journal of Political Economy/Volume 2/Number 12/The Genuine Book of Nullification/Quotes
"To this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party. Its co-states forming, as to itself, the other party," and "as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress."—Jefferson
"I confess that when the Confederation was formed, Congress ought to have been invested with more extensive powers—But when the States saw that Congress indirectly aimed at Sovereignty, they were jealous, and therefore it was that they refused further concessions."—Luther Martin.
"You have given to Congress the sword and the purse, and they will take the rest whether you will it or not."—Patrick Henry.
"Is it consonant with reason, with wisdom, with policy, to suppose that in a Legislature where a majority of persons sit whose interests are greatly different from ours that we should have the smallest chance of receiving adequate advantages?—certainly not."—Rawlins Lowndes.
"In order that the General Government should preserve itself, it is necessary it should presserve justice between the several states."—Judge Parsons
"An Act of usurpation is not obligatory—it is not law—Any man may be justified in his resistance to it—Let him be considered as a criminal by the General Government—yet his own fellow citizens alone can convict him—They are his jury—and if they pronounce him innocent, not all the powers of congress can hurt him—and innocent they certainly will pronounce him, if the supposed law which he resisted was an act of usurpation."—Ib.
"It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the State Governments, will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the National Authority. Projects of usurpations cannot be masked under pretences so likely to escape the penetration of select bodies of men, as of the people at large. The Legislatures will have better means of information. They can discover the danger at a distance; and, possessing all the organs of civil power and the confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of opposition, in which they can combine all the resources of the community."—Alexander Hamilton. [Federalist, No. 28.]
"If regardless of our duty as citizens, and our solemn obligations as Representatives—regardless of the Rights of our constituents—regardless of every sanction human and divine, we are ready to violate the Constitution we have sworn to defend; will the people submit to our unauthorized acts; will the states sanction our usurped power? Sir, they ought not to submit: they would deserve the chains which these measures are forging for them if they did not resist."—Mr. Livingston, on the Alien Bill.
"The history of the United States forcibly admonishes the people of America that they should suffer no invasion of their political Constitutions (however trivial the instance may appear,) to pass away without a determined persevering resistance. The future evils of a bad example in Government are far heavier than any immediate mischief that can possibly result. Every unreproved invasion of our political constitutions invites the crusades of arbitrary power against the public liberties; and while examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures, a capacity for augmentation gradually increases." Virginia Report, 1821, on Federal usurpations.
"The theory of Government, as established in America, contemplates the Federal and State Governments as mutual checks on one another, constraining the various authorities to revolve within their proper and constitutional spheres."—Virginia Report, 1829, on do.
"The inviolable preservation of our political institutions is entrusted to the General Assembly of Virginia in common with the Legislatures of the several States; and the sacred duty devolves upon them of preserving these institutions unimpaired."—Do.
"Gentlemen may say what they please of the preamble to the Constitution; but the Constitution is not the work of the amalgamated population of the then existing Confederacy; but the offspring of the States. And however high we may carry our heads, and strut and fret our hour "dressed in a little brief authority;" it is in the power of the States to extinguish this Government at a blow. They have only to refuse to send memebers to the other branch of this Legislature, or to appoint Electors of President and Vice President, and the thing is done."—John Randolph, (on Internal Improvement.)
"The Judiciary branch is the Instrument which, working like gravity, without intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated mass."—Jefferson.
"The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd and slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."—New Hampshire Constitution.
"The strength and power of usurpation consist wholly in the fear of resisting it; and in order to be free, it is only sufficient that we will it."—Rights of Man
"This being a Government limited and controlled by a written constitution that defines its powers, I, as a Senator from South Carolina am bold to announce that this Government recognizes no such principle that the majority shall rule. The fact is that a majority in the enacting of these laws has ruled. They could have succeeded on no other principle. But the fundamental principles of our Government recognise no principle of rule but that prescribed by the Constitution; and to this it must be brought again, or we, as a people, are undone." Judge Smith, (on South Carolina Protest.)
"The people of South Carolina believed that when the States surrendered into the hands of the General Government, a portion of their Sovereignty, it was in trust for the accomplishment of certain specific objects and every exercise of power beyond the attainment of those specified objects is a violations of the compact between the several States and the United States, and whenever that compact is infracted by the Government of the United States, it belongs to the several States to exercise their reserved Sovereignty to reduce the General Government to the exercise of powers within its legitimate sphere of action, and to restore the compact to its original purity."—Ib. (Do.)