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this country. It is this. Is it competent to a President of the United States to question the rectitude of a decision of the Supreme Court? -- It is the settled axiom of republican governments that the three great departments of political power, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, shall be kept separate and distinct, and be wielded by different hands, each being separately responsible for its conduct, in its own peculiar sphere. It has been universally deemed essential to the liberty and safety of the people that this division of power should be strictly maintained. The very definition of a despotism is the union of all these powers in the same hand. Hence it has been the labour of the Constitution of the United States to keep them apart. Thus the first article of that instrument declares that "all legislative powers herein granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate & house of Representatives": The second article, that "the Executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States," and it is thereby made his duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed": the third article that "the judicial power shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as Congress shall, from time to time, ordain & establish"; and the decision of the Supreme Court is made final. Now the legislative power is employed in making and repealing laws; and the repealing process is as exclusively a legislative act as was the first creation of the law projected to be repealed. So the judicial power is employed in making in the inferior tribunals, and affirming or reversing them in the Supreme Court, and the reversal or affirmation is as exclusively a judicial act as the passing the first sentence. Let us not be told then that the President has never claimed the power of making a law; if he has repealed one, he has greatly usurped the legislative power. Let us not be told that he has never passed a judicial sentence; if he has reversed one, he has been equally guilty of usurping judicial power. And has he not repealed a law of Congress, in refusing to carry into effect the Indian intercourse act of 1802, on the alleged ground of its unconstitutionality? Of what consequence is it that he has not, in terms, repealed that law, and that he has not expunged it from the statute book? Has he not declared that it is no law, and treated it as a dead letter, a mere nullity? And is not this a practical repeal of the law, far more efficacious than a mere verbal repeal; and is it not