ginia is the word respective, prefixed to the "rights," &c., to be secured within the States. Could the abuse of the expression have been foreseen or suspected, the form of it would doubtless have been varied. But what can be more consistent with common sense, than that all having the same rights, &c., should unite in contending for the security of them to each?

It is remarkable how closely the nullifiers, who make the name of Mr. Jefferson the pedestal for their colossal heresy, shut their eyes and lips whenever his authority is ever so clearly and emphatically against them. You have noticed what he says in his letters to Monroe and Carrington, pages 43 and 203, vol. ii, with respect to the powers of the old Congress to coerce delinquent States, and his reasons for preferring for the purpose a naval to a military force; and, moreover, that it was not necessary to find a right to coerce in the federal articles, that being inherent in the nature of a compact. It is high time that the claim to secede at will should be put down by the public opinion; and I shall be glad to see the task commenced by one who understands the subject.

I know nothing of what is passing at Richmond, more than what is seen in the newspapers. You were right in your fore. sight of the effect of the passages. in the late proclamation. They have proved a leaven for much fermentation there, and created an alarm against the danger of consolidation, balancing that of disunion. I wish, with you, the Legislature may not seriously injure itself by assuming the high character of mediator. They will certainly do so if they forget that their real influence will be in the inverse ratio of a boastful interposition of it.

If you can fix and will name the day of your arrival at Orange Court House, we will have a horse there for you; and if you have more baggage than can be otherwise brought than on wheels, we will send such a vehicle for it. Such is the state of the roads, produced by the wagons hurrying flour to market, that it may be impossible to send our carriage, which would answer both purposes.

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.

MONTPELLIER, Dec. 27, 1832. DEAR SIR,-I have this moment only received yours of the 22d. I regret the delay, as you wished an earlier answer than you can now have, though I shall send this immediately to the post-office. My correspondence with Judge Roane originated in the request that I would take up the pen on the subject he was discussing, or about to discuss. Although I concurred much in his views of it, I differed, as you will see, with regard to the power of the Supreme Court of the United States in relation to the State court. This was in my last letter, which being an answer, did not require one, and none was received. My view of the supremacy of the federal court, when the Constitution was under discussion, will be found in the Federalist. Perhaps I may, as could not be improper, have alluded to cases (of which all courts must judge) within the scope of its functions. Mr. Pendleton's opinion that there ought to be an appeal from the Supreme Court of a State to the Supreme Court of the United States, contained in his letter to me, was, I find, avowed in the Convention of Virginia, and so stated by his nephew, latterly in Congress. I send you a copy of Col. J. Taylor's argument on the carriage tax. If I understand the beginning pages, he is not only high-toned as to judicial power, but regards the federal court as the paramount authority. Is it possible to resist the nullifying inference from the doctrine that makes the State courts uncontrollable by the Supreme Court of the United States?

I cannot lay my hand on my letter to Judge Roane.* The word omitted, I presume, is argument. It is a common compliment among the French, as you know, to say you have given all its lustre, &c.

*

*

*

What is said in my letter to Mr. Everett, in the North American Review, as to the origin of the Constitution, I considered as squaring with the account given in the Federalist of the mix

*See Vol. iii., p. 222.

ture of national and federal features in the Constitution. That view of it was well received at the time by its friends, and, I believe, has not been controverted by the republican party. A marked and distinctive feature in the resolutions of 1798 is, that the plural number is invariably used in them, and not the singu lar, and the course of the reasoning required it.

As to my change of opinion about the bank, it was in conformity to an unchanged opinion that a certain course of practice required it.

The tariff is unconnected with the resolutions of 1798. In the first Congress of 1789 I sustained, and have in every situation since adhered to it. I had flattered myself, in vain it seems, that whatever my political errors may have been, I was as little chargeable with inconsistencies as any of my fellow-labourers through so long a period of political life.

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.

MONTPELLIER, Dec. 28, 1832.

DEAR SIR, I wrote you a few lines last evening in answer to yours of the 22d. Resuming my search for the letter of June 29, 1821, *I have been successful, and hasten to give you the words omitted in your copy. After "their full lustre," fill the blank with the words "to the arguments against the suability of States by individuals." I was rather surprised to find such a substantial identity in several respects between the letter and that to Mr. Everett, the member of Congress, which went into the North American Review. I am less apprehensive of being convicted of inconsistencies in political opinions than I am unwilling to be thought obtrusive of them on the public. I believe not a single letter of that sort has been published which was not an answer, as was that to Mr. Everett. The occasion which led to the tenour of this last, was the reference to, and misconstruction of, the Virginia resolutions of 1798, which I wished to rescue from the erroneous use of them. I will mention to you in confidence, that I had previously written a very similar *See Vol. iii., p. 222.

one to Col. Hayne, in answer to a communication of his speech, &c., in which he had referred to, and supported his heresy, by the authority of Virginia. He promised to answer my letter, but never did.

I mentioned that I had been uniform in my views of several great constitutional questions. I might have added to them the question concerning roads and canals, and the phrase "common defence and general welfare." On the subject of the tariff, now the theme and the torch which agitates and inflames the public. mind, my course has not varied through the period commencing with the Federal Government, and down to my letters to you a few years ago.

I observe that the Report of the Committee on the South Carolina and other papers copy into it one of the resolutions of 1798, and italicize it. The aspect of it, without the explanation of the report of 1799, may be perverted to a nullifying use by the word "respective." But it was not extraordinary that the States should co-operate all for attaining the objects of each. Had a nullification by a single State occurred as a doctrine likely to claim countenance from the expression, the contemporary evidence which has been given of the temper and views of the General Assembly justifies the presumption that it would have been sufficiently varied. It is not probable that such an idea as the South Carolina nullification had ever entered the thoughts of a single member, or even those of a citizen of South Carolina herself.

TO PROFESSOR DAVIS.-(NOT SENT.)

MONTPELLIER, 1832. [1833.] DEAR SIR, I received in due time the copy of your lectures on the constitutionality of the "protective duties."

No one can commend more than I do the freedom with which you have discussed the subject, or be more disposed than I am to do justice to the ingenuity of the reasoning and the literary stamp which the lecture exhibits. But as it has taken for its

text "a view of the constitutional power of Congress to promote and protect domestic manufactures," contained in a letter from me to J. C. Cabell, I may be permitted to offer the remarks to which I think the adverse view maintained in the lecture is liable.

I must begin with a protest against the passage which classes me" with others who extend the constitutional power of Congress over commerce, even to the occupations of tradesmen, such as carpenters," &c. Against such an error I might safely appeal to the language in several parts of the letter, and to the obvious scope of all its reasoning, as necessarily showing that the trade which Congress had the power to regulate meant commerce, and, in its application there, "foreign commerce." But in the outset of the letter is a sentence which, if it had not been overlooked, would have saved the lecture from the error it committed. The sentence is in these words: "It [the question to be examined] is a simple question, whether the power to regulate trade with foreign nations, as a distinct and substantive item in the enumerated powers, embraces the object of encouraging, by duties, restrictions, and prohibitions, the manufactures and products of the country." If, in citing the Constitution, the word trade was put in the place of commerce, the word foreign made it synonymous with commerce. Trade and commerce are, in fact, used indiscriminately, both in books and in conversation. Free trade, in its most familiar sense, is the phrase for the freedom of foreign commerce; and the internal interchanges between the towns and the country are as often expressed by the term commerce as by the term trade. Whether there be "others" whe extend the commercial power of Congress to the occupations of tradesmen, I know not. If there be, it may be doubted whether so gross a misconstruction was entitled to all the disproof bestowed on it.

The grounds on which the constitutionality of the tariff for the encouragement of manufactures is denied, are, that the express power granted to Congress to impose duties, limits them to the sole purpose of revenue, and that no power to impose