"[101]
We have seen already how vehemently the idea of even _judicial_ coercion
was repudiated by Hamilton, Marshall, and others. The suggestion of
_military_ coercion was uniformly treated, as in the above extracts,
with still more abhorrence. No principle was more fully and firmly
settled on the highest authority than that, under our system, there
could be no coercion of a State.
Mr. Webster, in his elaborate speech of February 16, 1833, arguing
throughout against the sovereignty of the States, and in the course of
his argument sadly confounding the ideas of the Federal Constitution and
the Federal Government, as he confounds the sovereign people of the
States with the State governments, says: "The States _can not_ omit to
appoint Senators and electors. It is not a matter resting in State
discretion or State pleasure.... No member of a State Legislature can
refuse to proceed, at the proper time, to elect Senators to Congress, or
to provide for the choice of electors of President and Vice-President,
any more than the members can refuse, when the appointed day arrives, to
meet the members of the other House, to count the votes for those
officers and ascertain who are chosen."[102] This was before the
invention in 1877 of an electoral commission to relieve Congress of its
constitutional duty to count the vote. Mr. Hamilton, on the contrary,
fresh from the work of forming the Constitution, and familiar with its
principles and purposes, said: "It is certainly true that the State
Legislatures, by forbearing the appointment of Senators, may destroy the
national Government.
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