How are they to act in the decision of these questions? By what considerations are they to be controlled? They know that they are responsible to the people, under whose commission they act, for all they do. The Constitution does not give to one department the right to decide such questions for another, either in terms or by necessary implication, nor subject them to any other responsibility, nor place before them any guide for the government of their decisions other than their own discretion and their own consciences, and has caused to be placed upon their consciences an oath that they will, in no event, act contrary to that instrument. Under such circumstances, I ask, what are they to do? What can they do, consistently with the duty they owe to God, to their country, and to themselves, other than to decide such questions for themselves, following the dictates of their own judgment? Can it be believed that those who framed and adopted the Constitution intended to place these high functionaries,--the only representatives of the people, in the great departments of the government, over whose continuance in office the people possess control--to place them, in respect to their official acts, about which a constitutional question can be raised, under the guidance of a department over which the people possess no such control, to be regulated by its decisions in private actions, to which such functionaries are not parties, and of which decisions they are, notwithstanding, to take notice at their peril. If a system so anti-republican could have been designed by those who made the Constitution, is it to be supposed that they would have omitted to declare, on the face of the instrument, that such was their intention, leaving those functionaries to grope their way to its discovery. Such a question--one in which the character of our political institutions is so much involved, and upon a right understanding of which their ultimate safety may depend--should be stripped of every uncertainty. The claim set up for the Supreme Court must be good throughout, or it is not good at all. The principle, that the final decision of constitutional questions belongs exclusively to the supreme judicial tribunal, set up in Mr. Webster's speech, must be true throughout, or it cannot be true to any extent. It amounts to this: the incumbents of the legislative and executive departments, in respect to questions of constitutional power, are _ministerial officers only_. Constitutional questions are points in respect to which they have no right to exercise their own discretion, but are bound, at every important step, to look to the judiciary for guidance, and if they omit to adopt its decisions, if it has made any, they do so at their peril:--the former department at the hazard of having its laws, if the Supreme Court regard them as unconstitutional, treated as a nullity, not only when they are relied upon "in cases in law and equity," but in all cases, and everywhere.