General Government should be secured, and the object was attained by the proposition finally adopted, which declares distinctly, both in a positive and negative form, that such is the understanding of the Convention, and leaves it to _the Courts of Justice_ to enforce the provision. This plan is just as effectual as the other would have been, because the decisions of the courts may and must be sustained, if the occasion require it, by the whole military force of the country; while at the same time it removes the possibility of any actual collision between the two law-giving powers, in the regular performance of their functions. Each exercises a complete and uncontrolled discretion as to the objects and extent of its own legislation;--puts its own construction upon its own powers;--passes, in short, any laws which it deems constitutional and expedient. Neither, in this form of action, has any control over the proceedings of the other.--The General Government has no more right to annul an act of the State of South Carolina, than the State of South Carolina has to annul an act of the General Government. But when the proceedings of the two powers come into collision,--as it may well be supposed that, under such circumstances, they occasionally will,--the silent operation of the Courts of Justice gives the ascendancy, where the Constitution declares that it belongs, to those of the General Government. The provision, like most others in the Constitution, is obviously the simplest and best that could have been adopted. The rejection of other propositions of similar tendency only proves that the Convention considered the subject very maturely, and successively laid aside the several imperfect and inexpedient methods of effecting the great object in question, which were proposed to them, until they finally hit upon one that was satisfactory.