"Extreme cases of oppression justify… a resort to the original right of resistance, a right belonging to every community, under every form of Government…"
James Madison, Letter to N. P. Trist, December, 1831 (Madison, 1865, IV, page 206)
What, then, would be the type of resistance justified by an assertion by the U.S. Congress, under the U. S. Constitution, of the power “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over a community such as Washington, D.C.? The "original right of resistance"
was exercised, under very similar conditions, by the communities of the 13 original colonies when faced with similar assertions by the British Parliament in the Declaratory Act of March, 1766 (q.v.).
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