[10] See 4 Elliot’s _Debates_, pp. 345 and 349, showing at the inception and in the early period of our government protective duties were apparently universally approved by Congress and the Presidents. It seems only necessary to state the viciousness of this doctrine of nullification and secession, that every State could practically put its veto on every law and act of the General Government it questioned, and dissolve it at its pleasure, to prove that no such impracticable government was established. Certainly, reasoning _a priori_, this doctrine has no standing. Our General Government differs from that of Great Britain and nearly all other governments in that it is created by a written Constitution, and its authority is limited by that Constitution. The power of Parliament is imperial; there is no limit to it; it does what it deems best. There apparently is an almost insurmountable difficulty in the writers of other countries, only knowing unlimited, imperial supreme governments, to comprehend that a government of limited powers can be supreme in the powers granted to it. Knowing that the powers of our General Government are limited, they are apt to draw the conclusion that the fundamental unlimited power must be in the subordinate component parts, the States. Our States, as well as the General Government, have limited powers granted by written constitutions. The State governments are not only limited in their powers, but the people, who established them in their constitutions, have invariably recognized the supreme power of the General Government; in none of them have they undertaken to confer on the State Legislatures or government powers in conflict with the sovereign national powers of the General Government. The powers given to the State governments are subordinate and local. All the constitutions, State and General, have had the sanction and an adoption by the people. The argument of Hayne, Calhoun, and his followers, and of all Southern writers--that the United States Constitution is a compact or agreement amongst the several States as independent sovereign nations, and that in every compact between nations, a contracting power, where there is a disagreement, as there is no superior authority over them, has the right to maintain the correctness of its construction--ignores the case where the compact may be one for the making of the several contracting powers one nation. Compact means an agreement, nothing more or less, whether applied to states or individuals. It cannot be denied that independent sovereign nations can _by compact or agreement_ make themselves into a perpetual, indissoluble nation. The voluntary combination of independent sovereign powers, or nations, or states into one national union _must be by compact_.