Daily National Democrat

"The Constitution and the Laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the Supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

Under this clause of the American Constitution the Fugitive Slave Act is perfect and valid, notwithstanding the Personal Liberty Bills of certain of the Northern States, and notwithstanding other enactments of similar character. The same guarantee is in that clause for the protection of the country against Northern nullification as against Southern. A Legislative enactment by a Northern State, in violation of the Federal Constitution, can no more stand in the way of the execution of the Federal authority by a competent Administration than could a parallel enactment for Southern purposes in the South. There is a way of testing the constitutionality of every law of Congress. There is but one way known to the Constitution, and in that one way, every loyal State and community must acquiesce. A constitutional law of Congress must be enforced, in every State of this Union, or Government is at an end. It must be enforced despite of conflicting legislative enactments and the so much vaunted doctrine of State rights. There used to be some sensible meaning to the term State Rights, but it is made to mean, by its more modern interpreters, the unlimited liberty of every State to do as it pleases. The sooner this interpretation is crushed out under the heel of popular contempt the better. If a law of Congress be faithfully carried out, whether it be like the tariff law against which South Carolina threatened nullification, or the Fugitive Slave Law, attempted to be nullified now by a portion of the Northern States, there can be no cause of complaint by any true patriot or conservative man in the country.

We say, then, that all this hue and cry about obstructions of the Fugitive Slave Law, by individual States, on the ground that it affords just cause for a dissolution of the Union, is nonsense, or it is madness We have yet to learn that a United States Marshal, with a respectable Federal power to back him, has failed to execute the Fugitive Slave Law in any of the free States If he has not had sufficient power to back him, whose fault was it but either his own in not applying for it, or that of the Administration in refusing it when it was applied for, There is no getting around the plain fact, that it is within the ability of the Federal Government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, We believe that the most palpable violations of that law have occurred during an administration supposed to have been thoroughly controlled by the South, Why was that Administration not urged up to the point of a determined enforcement of the law in all those cases ? We very much fear that a mere excuse was wanted for the movements now on foot by the conspirators of certain sections,

But that is neither here nor there. The point we contend for is this; That the clause of the Constitution above quoted is a full guarantee of the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, if there be a President in the chair fit for the position, or who is at all willing to execute a constitutional act. Abe Lincoln has declared his intention to enforce that law. In other words he is going to put down nullification in the North as Jackson put down nullification in the South. Now, we say, let him do it, and, if he does, let him be sustained by the public sentiment of the country.

Because some of the Northern States, in a wholly unjustifiable manner, feel like doing what South Carolina felt like doing in Jackson's time. it affords no reason for the dissolution of the Union. We presume the Supreme law of the land can be executed now as well as it was executed formerly, and, until the General Government proves itself wholly incapable of enforcing the laws which Congress has enacted, there is no sense in supposing that a dissolution can take place. We believe in trying the strength of the General Government, as it was tried by Washington in the celebrated whiskey rebellion in the North, and by Jackson in the no less celebrated nullification business of South Carolina. We believe that the Federal Government would be sustained by the people, whose agent it is. If it would not be sustained, if it is indeed so poor and worthless a thing as some upstart theorists would have us believe, the sooner we know it the better. We are of the opinion that it is potent in the armor of the Constitution, and that THE PEOPLE of this Union will see to it, that "the Constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."