# State Documents on Federal Relations/6

6. Second Remonstrance of the Legislature, January 16, 1795.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled: The Memorial of the Legislature of New Hampshire, showeth:
That impelled by a firm attachment to the first principles of a free Government, and the accumulated distresses of a number of their citizens, they again remonstrate to Congress against a violation of State independence and an unwarrantable encroachment in the courts of the United States.
​[Here follows a statement of the case as they view it.]
That this State had a right to oppose the British usurpation in the way it thought best; could make laws as it chose, with respect to every transaction where it had not explicitly granted the power to Congress; that the formation of courts for carrying those laws into execution belonged only to the several States; that Congress might advise and recommend, but the States only could enact and carry into execution; and that the attempts repeatedly made to render the laws of this State in this respect null and void is a flagrant insult to the principle of the revolution; is establishing a Government they hoped to be a blessing on the uniform plea of arbitrary power, on an implication of grants of jurisdiction not intended to be included, nor even in contemplation.
Can the rage for annihilating all the power of the States, and reducing this extensive and flourishing country to one domination, make the administrators blind to the danger of violating all the principles of our former Government, to the hazard of convulsions in endeavoring to eradicate every trace of State power, except in the resentment of the people? Can the constitutional exercise of the power of Congress in future be in no other way established than by the belief that the former Congress always possessed the same? Can the remembrance of the manner of our opposition to tyranny, and the gradual adoption of federal ideas, be so painful as to exclude (unless forced into view) the knowledge that Congress, in its origin, was merely an advisory body; that it entirely depended upon the will of the several Legislatures to enforce any measure they might recommend: that the inconveniences of this principle produced the confederation; and, even at that late day, it was declared that powers not expressly delegated to Congress are reserved to the States, or the people, respectively; that the experience of years, of the inefficacy of thirteen Legislatures to provide for the wants and to procure the happiness of the American people, caused the adoption of the present constitution—an adoption totally unnecessary, in point of principle, if the claims of former Congressional power are established.
Forced by events, the Legislature of New Hampshire have made the foregoing statements; and while they cheerfully acknowledge the power of Congress in cases arising under the ​constitution, they equally resolve not to submit the laws, made before the existence of the present government by this (then independent State) to the adjudication of any power on earth, while the freedom of the Federal Government shall afford any constitutional means of redress.
Impressed with the singular merits of the present case, and deprecating the many and complicated evils which must be the necessary consequence of establishing the power claimed by the courts of the United States, and its tendency to produce disaffection to our Government, the Legislature of New Hampshire rest assured that a speedy and just decision will be had, and that the rights of State Governments and the interests of their citizens will be secured against the exercise of a power of a court, or any body of men under Congress, of carrying into effect an unconstitutional decree of a court instituted by a former Congress, and which, in its effects, would unsettle property and tear up the laws of the several states.