Jefferson himself asserted this right of a confederacy to coerce a State, a party to an agreement, when he wrote to Cartwright that the Confederate Congress should send a frigate and compel a State to pay its quota. Washington was of the same opinion, when, in reference to New Jersey’s refusal to pay her contribution, he wrote, “that counties in Virginia and Massachusetts might oppose themselves to the laws of the State in which they are, as an individual State can oppose itself to the Federal Government.”[67] [67] Washington’s letter to Dr. Wm. Gordon. Bancroft’s _History of the Constitution_, vol. i., p. 320, Appendix. See also in Jefferson’s _Works_, letter to Madison, April 16, 1781, approving of coercion by a party to a compact. The absurdity of the Kentucky resolutions[68] does not end with the nullification theory. One would imagine the dispute would have been, who did not write them, not who did. By the Constitution certain powers are given to Congress, and the authority “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.” The power to punish three offences only is mentioned, but that Congress had the power to enact all laws necessary to enforce and maintain its authority is expressly given, and never had been questioned before these resolutions. [68] Kentucky resolutions, 4 Elliot, 540. The authority of Congress is often illustrated by referring to the power given “to establish post-offices and post-roads.” Under this brief grant, Congress has passed laws punishing the robbing and obstructing the mail, and breaking open letters, and has assumed the right of taking of lands, and building post-offices, and doing everything requisite for protecting, transmitting, and distributing mail matter. Congress has also passed laws punishing the bribing of judges and of obstructing or in any way interfering with judicial processes. In fact, it is difficult to see how the government could go on without these powers to enforce and maintain its authority. But this Kentucky Legislature resolved that Congress had only the power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and coin of the United States, and piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the laws of nations; because the power to punish these three crimes was alone enumerated in the Constitution. And it expressly enumerated two acts, one the Sedition Law, and the other an act to punish forging or uttering counterfeit bills of the Bank of the United States, “and all other their acts (‘Congress’) which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the Constitution, are altogether void and of no force”; that the States only had this power each in its own territory.