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The Power To Right
“Should the Federal Government, therefore, attempt to exercise ' powers that do not belong to it—and those that do bel'ong to it are few. specified, well-defined—all others being reserved to the people and to the States—should it step beyond its province, and ertcroach on rights that have ijpt'been delegated, it is thc duty of the States to interpose. There is no other power that can interpose. The counterweight, the opposing force of the State, is the only check to overaction known to the system.
“In questions of meum et tuum, where rights of property are concerned, and some other cases specified in the Constitution. 1 grant you that the Federal Judiciary may pronounce on the validity of the law. But in questions involving th« right to power, whether this or that power has been delegated or reserved, they cannot and ought not to be the arbiter; that question has been left, as it always was. and always must be left, to be determined among sovereignties in the best way they can. Political wisdom has not yet discovered any infallible mathematical 1 rule, bv which to determine the assumptons of power between those who know no other law or limitation save thar imposed on them by their own consent, ai\d which they can abrogate at pleasure. Pray let m£ ask the gentleman—and no one knows better than himself—who ordained this Constitution? Who defined its powers, and said, thus far shalt thou go, but no farther? Was it not the people of the States in their sovereign capacity? Did they commit an act of suicide by so doing?—an act of selfannihilation? No, thank God. they did not; but are still alive, and. 1 trust, are becoming sensible of the importance of those rights reserved to them, and prohibited to that government which they ordained for their common defence. Shall the creature of the State be the sole judge of the legality or constitutionality of its own acts, in a question of power •between them and the States? Shall they who assert a right, be the sole judges of their authority to claim and to exercise it? Does not all power seek to enlarge itself?—grow on that it feeds upon? Has not that been the history of all encroachment, all usurpation? If this Federal Government’ in all its departments then, is to be the sole judge of its own usurpations. neither the people nor the States, in a short time., will have any thing to contend for, and this creature of their making will become their sovereign.
John Randolph in debate with Patrick Henry,
March Term 1799 at Charlotte Court House
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