At the time they were passed little notice was taken of the Kentucky resolves, owing undoubtedly to the small importance of the declarations of the Legislature of a State just admitted to the Union with but few inhabitants. Besides, Kentucky had no claim to original sovereignty. She owed her existence, the right of government over her territory, and of expressing her opinions, to the privilege the General Government had given her to become a State. How with any decency could such a State claim to be a sovereign, to pass judgment on the legality of the laws of the United States from whom came her very being? Then, after all, resolutions are not laws, and these resolutions of Kentucky (and the same remark applies to the resolutions of all other States passing judgment on the laws of the United States declaring them null and void) are merely the opinion of that particular Legislature that passed them, a sort of harmless suggestion of superior wisdom. There is no provision in any of our State constitutions authorizing the Legislature to give such opinions and the next Legislature may pass others directly contradictory. They are only entitled to respect as _opinions_, as would be the opinion of any town meeting or synod of clergymen or assemblage of citizens. The Kentucky resolutions declare, and it was the first time any such declaration was made, the same doctrine that Calhoun and Hayne subsequently maintained; that the several States are united by compact, under the style and title of a constitution, in a general government for special purposes, and when the General Government assumes undelegated powers its acts are void and of no force. Then comes the doctrine, that this government created by this compact is not the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, “but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.” Let us examine this reasoning of the Kentucky resolutions. It is that the States are united in a general government by a compact, called a constitution, for special purposes, and when the government assumes undelegated powers its acts are null and void. There is no objection to calling the Constitution a compact for special purposes only, and declaring that the government under it has no right to assume not granted or undelegated powers, and that any such assumption is void and of no force. The only objection to this first clause is the ambiguity in the declaration that _the several States_ are united by compact. The Constitution may be called a compact; but it cannot be denied that it was between the people of the different States. It was not a treaty or agreement made by the State Legislatures or State governments.