Is it meant, that the Executive and Judiciary departments of the General Government shall suspend the execution of the law within the limits of the State in question? This again is equally impossible. The functions of the Executive and Judiciary departments are entirely administrative. The persons entrusted with them have no discretionary power. They are bound by their oaths of office to execute the laws that are given to them by the Legislature, and have no more right to augment or diminish them by one jot or tittle, than they have to declare themselves dictators of the country. The abandonment by the General Government of the power to pass the act complained of by the nullifying State is therefore a thing in itself entirely impracticable. Even the omnipotent Parliament of England, which, according to Lord Coke, can do any thing but convert a man into a woman, could not repeal a law which was sustained by a majority of its members; nor could even the hereditary executive power of England or any other constitutional monarchy suspend for a moment the execution of a law, which is still in force. The thing is in its nature a moral impossibility. So much for the first part of the two-fold duty, which, according to the Vice-President, devolves upon the General Government, in the event of the nullification by a State of a law of the United States. But the General Government is not only bound to abandon the disputed power, but also to apply to the States, in the form provided for amending the Constitution, for a grant of that power. We have seen that the first of these supposed duties is in its nature impracticable. It is obvious to the slightest reflection, that the other is not less so. By the General Government the Vice-President must of course intend, in this connexion, the Legislative department of the Government, the Executive, as such, having nothing to do with the process of amendment. Now, independently of the objection to which we have already adverted, viz. that the Constitution imposes no such duty on the Legislature, it is plain that the operation is in itself impracticable, for the same reason which would prevent the repeal of the obnoxious act. The Legislature cannot recommend an amendment of the Constitution, giving to itself the power to pass such an act, for the plain reason, that by the supposition a majority of the members believe that the Legislature already possess the power, and that it is consequently impracticable for them to adopt, on their official responsibility, a measure which implies that they believe the contrary.