Message:
Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of
America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to
their General Government; but that by compact under the style and
title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments
thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes,
delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each
State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self
Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes
undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no
force: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an
integral party, its co-States forming as to itself, the other party:
That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive
or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since
that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the
measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among
parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge
of itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
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Thu Jul 29 2010 4:39:23 PM