[6] Webster’s definition of constitution apparently is not a full one. A constitution is the fundamental statement of the powers granted to the government established by it; and it may, as Webster says, also contain the regulation under which its authority is to be executed. “Again the Constitution speaks of that political system which is established as the _Government of the United States_. Is it not doing strange violence to language to call a league or compact between sovereign powers a _government_?” The United States Government thus originated from the people, as did the State governments. It is created for one purpose, the State governments for another; it has its own powers, they have theirs. There is no more authority with them to arrest the operation of a law of Congress, than with Congress to arrest the operation of their laws. It was an Union among the States that should last for all time. It contains provisions for its amendment, none for its abandonment at any time. It declares that new States may come into it, but it does not declare that old States may go out. The Government was brought into existence for the very purpose of imposing certain salutary restraints on the State governments: it gave the United States _sovereign powers_ over the States; it could make war, it could coin money, it could make treaties; it prohibited a State from making war, coining money, or making treaties; it gave the United States the exclusive power to make citizens. The people erected this Government; they gave it a Constitution, and in that Constitution they enumerated the powers they bestowed; they made it a limited Government; they defined its authority. They did not leave it to the States to carry out the legal action--the application of law to individuals--as the Confederacy did. In the Constitution itself it declared the _Constitution and the laws of the United States, made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding_. No State law is to be valid which comes in conflict. Having enumerated the specified powers of the Government, it gives to Congress as a distinct and substantive clause, the power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any department or office thereof. Who is to decide when a controversy arises between the laws of a State and the United States? The claim of South Carolina is that instead of one tribunal we are to have four and twenty, as many tribunals as States; that each State is at liberty to decide as to the constitutionality of an act for itself and none bound to respect the decision of others.