or officer of the United States. Language cannot be stronger. It guards the reserved powers against the government as a whole, and against all its departments and officers; and in every mode by which they might be impaired; showing, clearly, that the intention was to place the reserved powers beyond the possible interference and control of the government of the United States. Now, when it is taken into consideration, that the right of the separate governments of the several States is as full and perfect to protect their own powers, as is that of the government of the United States to protect those which are delegated to it; and, of course, that it belongs to their reserved powers; that all the attempts made in the convention which framed the constitution, to deprive them of it, by vesting the latter with the power to overrule the right, equally failed; that Virginia could not be induced to ratify without incorporating the true construction she placed on it in her act of ratification; that, without her ratification, it would not, in all probability, have been adopted; and that it was accepted by the other States, subject to this avowed construction, without objection on their part — it is difficult to resist the inference, that their acceptance, under all these circumstances, was an implied admission of the truth of her construction; and that it makes it as binding on them as if it had been inserted in the constitution itself.
But her convention took the further precaution of having it inserted, in substance, in that instrument. Those who composed it were wise, experienced,
