Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee
527
pursuance of the Constitution of the United States; that the writ of error
in this cause was improvidently allowed under the authority of that Act;
that the proceedings thereon in the Supreme Court were coram non judice,
in relation to this court, and that obedience to its mandate be declined by
the court.’’
The questions involved in this judgment are of great importance and
delicacy. Perhaps it is not too much to affirm that, upon their right decision, rest some of the most solid principles which have hitherto been supposed to sustain and protect the Constitution itself. . . .
Before proceeding to the principal questions, it may not be unfit to dispose of some preliminary considerations which have grown out of the
arguments at the Bar.
The Constitution of the United States was ordained and established,
not by the States in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the
preamble of the Constitution declares, by ‘‘the people of the United
States.’’ There can be no doubt that it was competent to the people to
invest the general government with all the powers which they might
deem proper and necessary; to extend or restrain these powers according
to their own good pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme
authority. As little doubt can there be, that the people had a right to prohibit to the States the exercise of any powers which were, in their judgment, incompatible with the objects of the general compact; to make the
powers of the State governments, in given cases, subordinate to those of
the nation, or to reserve to themselves those sovereign authorities which
they might not choose to delegate to either. The Constitution was not,
therefore, necessarily carved out of existing State sovereignties, nor a surrender of powers already existing in State institutions, for the powers of
the States depend upon their own constitutions; and the people of every
State had the right to modify and restrain them, according to their own
views of policy or principle. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that
the sovereign powers vested in the State governments, by their respective constitutions, remained unaltered and unimpaired, except so far as
they were granted to the government of the United States.
These deductions do not rest upon general reasoning, plain and obvious as they seem to be. They have been positively recognized by one of
the articles in amendment of the Constitution, which declares, that ‘‘the