Counsel for the State of Virginia again advanced the principles which had been developed by Roane in Hunter vs. Martin but urged in addition that this particular appeal rendered Virginia a defendant contrary to Article XI of the Amendments. Marshall's summary of their argument at the outset of his opinion is characteristic: "They maintain," he said, "that the nation does not possess a department capable of restraining peaceably, and by authority of law, any attempts which may be made by a part against the legitimate powers of the whole, and that the government is reduced to the alternative of submitting to such attempts or of resisting them by force. They maintain that the Constitution of the United States has provided no tribunal for the final construction of itself or of the laws or treaties of the nation, but that this power must be exercised in the last resort by the courts of every State in the Union. That the Constitution, laws, and treaties may receive as many constructions as there are States; and that this is not a mischief, or, if a mischief, is irremediable." The cause of such absurdities, Marshall continued, was a conception of State Sovereignty contradicted by the very words of the Constitution, which assert its supremacy, and that of all acts of Congress in pursuance of it, over all conflicting state laws whatsoever. "This," he proceeded to say, "is the authoritative language of the American People, and if gentlemen please, of the American States. It marks, with lines too strong to be mistaken, the characteristic distinction between the Government of the Union and those of the States. The General Government, though limited as to its objects, is supreme with respect to those objects. This principle is a part of the Constitution, and if there be any who deny its necessity, none can deny its authority." Nor was this to say that the Constitution is unalterable. "The people make the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or unmake resides only in the whole body of the people, not in any subdivision of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it."