Of crime generally our people have a high understanding as well as of the necessity of its punishment; but in the catalogue of crimes there is one, and that the highest known to the laws and the Constitution, of which since the days of Aaron Burr they have become oblivious.
Blaine highlights a specific crime that has been overlooked by the public, stressing its significance in American law.
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The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied.
The States are colleagues of one another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected.
Without the exercise of those functions which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical strength which the Government has at its command.
But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…
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