It is unnecessary, we trust, to pursue this discussion any farther. The nullifiers, we repeat, scarcely attempt to reconcile their full and express admissions, that the Constitution is a social compact, by which the States have formed themselves into a body politic under a common Government, which body politic possesses, under the amending clause, an unlimited power over the political condition of its members, with the assertion, openly and obviously inconsistent with these admissions, that each State still retains its independence and sovereignty entire and unimpaired. Their whole argument, such as it is, consists in the eternal repetition of two ideas. The States were independent at the time when they made the Constitution,--therefore they are independent now. A. and B. were single persons at the time when they entered into a contract of marriage, therefore they are single still. The precise and avowed object of the contract, in both cases, is to put an end to the relation which the parties previously held towards each other, and to substitute for it another and a different one. Yet it is sagely concluded, that because they held towards each other this relation, which it was intended to terminate, before, they must of necessity hold it afterwards; and this is the conclusion which the Vice-President and his followers declare themselves determined to enforce upon the people of the United States, if necessary, at the cannon's mouth! What then, it may be asked, is in fact the situation of the States under the Constitution? Are they mere corporations, like our cities and towns, deriving all their powers from the acts of the Government under which they are placed? Assuredly not. The States are the original parties to the social compact, and are recognised in it as entitled to exercise a certain portion of the legislative power. In the exercise of this power, they are, as we have already remarked, just as independent of the General Government, as the General Government is of them in the exercise of the powers with which it is invested by the same Constitution. But although the General Government has no authority over the State Governments, the United States, besides the control which they exercise through the General Government over the citizens of the States, also possess, under the amending clause of the Constitution, an almost unlimited control over the political situation of the States themselves. Under these circumstances, it is obvious, that the States, though holding, not by law, but by an original right recognised in the Constitution, the legislative power which they are entitled to exercise, have yet no pretensions to sovereignty or absolute political independence, and that, the only sovereign power, recognised in our institutions is that of the people or body politic of the United States.