We have thus endeavored, by a few plain considerations, to show, first, that the doctrine of nullification is not only unsanctioned by the Constitution, but wholly impracticable, and that its results, if it could be carried into effect, would be of the most disastrous character:--secondly, that the only semblance of argument, by which the Vice-President attempts to sustain it in the document before us, is entirely without foundation. It follows from the view which we have taken of the subject, that the controversy respecting the origin of the Constitution, which has been often agitated in connexion with this question, is in a great measure foreign to it. Whether the General Government had its origin in the will of the State Governments, of the _people_ of the States, or of the _people_ of the United States is a point of no importance in the present inquiry, for those who admit that it is the real and rightful _Government of the country_. For those, if any such there be, who wish to establish the proposition that the Union is a confederacy of independent States, _subject to no common Government_, the question of the origin of the Constitution is an essential one, because it is in the circumstances attending it, that they must look for the proofs of their theory. But for those who believe that that instrument is a _social compact_, and the Government created by it a real Government, it is unnecessary, for the present purpose, to go beyond that fact, which proves, of itself, that its acts are the law of the land, and that in respect to them there is no middle course between obedience and rebellion.