that the acts of the General Government are paramount to those of the States. It was by forming themselves into one body politic, and by expressly stipulating with each other in the compact by which this body politic was formed, that the acts of the General Government representing it should be paramount to their own, that the States surrendered the right of putting their own construction on the powers of the General Government; and this is the foundation of the authority possessed by the judges, when, by virtue of a different clause, they take cognisance of cases arising under the Constitution, to decide, as they undoubtedly must and would do, that any act of a State, whether in its sovereign or legislative capacity, pretending to annul an act of the General Government, is of itself, _ipso facto_, null and void. Finally, says the Vice-President, 'it belongs to the authority which imposes an obligation, to declare its extent, as far as those are concerned on whom the obligation is placed. The obligation upon the individual citizens of the United States to obey the laws, results from the acts of their respective States, by which they became parties to the Union; and a similar act of the same authority declaring the extent of the obligation must be of equal authority, and of course releases the citizen from the obligation which he came under, by the effect of the former one.' This is a point of great importance. It is here admitted, that the individual citizens are under an obligation to obey the law which the State is attempting to annul; but it is affirmed, that they may be discharged from this obligation by an act of the State annulling the law, _because_ the same authority which imposed the obligation upon them has a right to release them from it. It is a matter of high concern for all who wish to know, and knowing, mean to perform their _duties_, to inquire how far this principle is true, or, if true, applicable to the present case.