This, as we have said, is the principal and leading consideration which governs the whole subject. Once admit, what the Vice-President fully recognises, and what no man in his senses can deny, that the General Government, call it agency or what you will, is a real Government;--that the instrument from which it derives its power is a real _Constitution_ or _social compact_, and the argument is brought to a close; there is not a word more to be said about the matter. The acts of the Government are, as such, the law of the land. This results from the nature of the case, and is also affirmed in the Constitution, which, in order to avoid all doubt or difficulty about the point immediately in controversy in the present instance, expressly provides that the acts of the General Government shall be the Supreme Law of the land, _any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding_. But to say that a citizen, or any number of citizens, can _annul_ or _repeal_ the law of the land, is, we repeat, a manifest absurdity. _Resist_ it they _can_, and in certain extreme cases _may_: but that they should _annul_ or _repeal_ it, is a thing not illegal or unconstitutional, but impossible and unimaginable. The repeal of a law is as much an exercise of legislative power as the enactment of it, and from its very nature cannot be performed, unless by some person or persons invested with that power, in other words, by the Government. To assert the contrary, is in substance to assert that the same person can be sovereign and subject, or in a free State, in and out of office, at one and the same time.