The full significance of Madison's reply will be apparent, when we consider the danger that must have resulted to the Union by the secession of a State occupying its geographical

centre.

66

My opinion is, that a reservation of a right to withdraw, if amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is a conditional ratification; that it does not make New York a member of the new Union, and consequently that she should not be received on that plan * A Constitution requires an adoption in toto and for ever. It has been so adopted by the other States. An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as an adoption of some of the articles only. In short, any condition whatever must vitiate the ratification.

The idea of reserving the right to withdraw was started at Richmond, and considered as conditional ratification, which was itself abandoned as worse than rejection." 1

The Quarterly Reviewer follows Mr. Spence in the admirable Jesuitism, that the Constitu'Hist. of Constitution, CURTIS, ii. 588. Hamilton's Works, i. 464.

tion is only binding so long as a State chooses to continue a member; and that the way not to commit treason, and so invite coercion, is, first, to withdraw from the Union and then defy its authority. As reasonably might the thief claim to withdraw from the authority of a law which he was determined to violate.1

A periodical, professing to be the organ of the Conservative party, is here found advocating ultra-revolutionary doctrines. "It is good, also," says Lord Bacon, "not to try experiments in States, except the necessity be urgent, or utility evident; and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire for change that pretendeth the reformation. And lastly, that the novelty, though it be not rejected, yet be held for a

1 "I congratulate you on the event which restores you to the public councils, where your services will be valuable, particularly in defending the Constitution and Union against the false doctrines which assail them. That of nullification seems to be generally abandoned in Virginia by those who had most leaning towards it. But it still flourishes

in the hotbed where it sprang up."

"I know not whence the idea could proceed that I concurred in the doctrine, that although a State could not nullify a law of the Union, it had a right to secede from the Union. Both spring from the same poisonous root."-Mr. MADISON to Jos. C. Cabell, Sept. 16, 1831.

6

suspect, and, as the Scripture saith, That we make a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us, and discover what is the straight and right way, and so to walk in it.'" 1

Thus carefully did our great philosopher guard even needful changes in the laws of a country. But in the pages of a Conservative. journal we find the reverence due to the solemn ordinance and establishment of a Constitution by a whole People, and the sacredness of political oaths on the part of its administrators and all public functionaries throughout the land to uphold its supremacy, put aside as of trivial obligation, and made subservient to popular fickleness and the fleeting interests of a section of the community. The right of Revolution by a majority we understand: it is the lex non scripta of humanity; but its erection into a system of Government-its recognition by an established Constitutionwould be a privilege worthy only of the "Paradise of fools." To such miserable arguments are the advocates for secession driven. Whence, then, is a constitutional right to secede

1 Essay on Innovations.

derived? Not certainly from the old Confederation; because there the Union was to be perpetual. The defect of that compact lay in its conditions, making union impossible; but certainly not in permitting secession as a right; and not from the Constitution, because in adopting it the Republic entered into that "more perfect Union" which that Constitution was expressly intended to secure.

L

X.

NULLIFICATION AND SECESSION.

We

WE have so far traced the idea of National union pervading the Republic from the early colonial times, through the abortive Articles of "Confederation," and into the complete organization of an established "Constitution." have discovered no trace of a reserved sovereignty on the part of the separate States, except for local purposes, or in their power to grant or withhold their consent to the new terms of the Union proposed in 1787. And when such persistent claims to sovereignty are made, it is somewhat important to remark, that, as a historical fact, it was never exercised by any of the original thirteen States of the Union, with two temporary exceptions, and by none of those since admitted, save Texas. Until the Declaration of Independence, the former were all subject as colonies to the