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To: Diamond
“If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Cordially,”

No.
During Virginia's ratification convention

John Taylor of Caroline - Didn't stutter:

“In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed.

The sovereignties which imposed the limitations upon the federal government, far from supposing that they perished by the exercise of a part of their faculties, were vindicated, by reserving powers in which their deputy, the federal government, could not participate; and the usual right of sovereigns to alter or revoke its commissions. “

13 posted on 03/10/2010 7:00:38 PM PST by Idabilly
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To: Idabilly
"In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed."

In light of the fact that "states", "sovereignties", "they" and "their" are plural, is it a logical consequent that a single state may annihilate the federal government?

The sovereignties which imposed the limitations upon the federal government, far from supposing that they perished by the exercise of a part of their faculties, were vindicated, by reserving powers in which their deputy, the federal government, could not participate; and the usual right of sovereigns to alter or revoke its commissions. “
Again, may a single state or sovereignty alter or revoke its commissions with regard to the deputy federal government, which commissions were granted by all, or may a single state or sovereignty even remove limitations upon the federal governemnt which all the states imposed?

Cordially,

31 posted on 03/10/2010 9:32:47 PM PST by Diamond (He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,)
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