to say, as a state officer, that the people may not give to the general government what powers, and for what purposes, they please? How comes it, sir, that these state governments dictate to their superiors--to the majesty of the people?” (2 _Ell. Deb._ 443.) We average Americans, legally bound (as American citizens) by no command (interfering with our human freedom) except from our _only_ legislature at Washington and then only in those matters in which _we ourselves_, the citizens of America, have directly given it power to command us, now intend insistently to ask all our governments, the supreme one at Washington and the subordinate ones in the states of which we are also citizens, exactly the same question which Wilson asked. Daniel Webster asked almost exactly the same question of Hayne and history does not record any answer deemed satisfactory by the American people. Webster believed implicitly in the concept of American law stated by those who made our Constitution. Like them, and unlike _our_ “constitutional” lawyers, he knew that the Tory concept of the relation of men to their government had disappeared from American basic law. “This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government, and the source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people?... It is, sir, the people’s constitution, the people’s government--made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the proposition, or dispute their authority. The states are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people.... The national government possesses those powers which it can be shown _the people_ have conferred on it, _and no more_.... We are here to administer a Constitution emanating immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our administration.... This government, sir, is the independent offspring of the popular will. It is not the creature of state legislatures; nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, the people brought it into existence, established it, and have hitherto supported it, for the very purpose, amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on state sovereignties.... The people, then, sir, erected this government. They gave it a constitution, and in that constitution _they_ have enumerated the powers which _they_ bestow upon it.... Sir, the very chief end, the main design for which the whole constitution was framed and adopted, was to establish a government that should not be obliged to act through state agency, depend on state opinion and state discretion.... If anything be found in the _national_ constitution, either by original