demolishing that position will I read from Mr. Webster's speech.

"The Resolutions," said Mr. Webster, "introduced by the gentleman, were apparently drawn up with care, and brought forward upon deliberation. I shall not be in danger, therefore, of misunderstanding him, or those who agree with him, if I proceed at once to these Resolutions, and consider them as an authentic statement of those opinions upon the great Constitutional question, by which the recent proceedings in South Carolina are attempted to be justified.

"These Resolutions are three in number.

"The third seems intended to enumerate, and to deny, the several opinions expressed in the President's proclamation, respecting the nature and powers of this Government. Of this third Resolution, I purpose, at present, to take no particular notice.

"The first two Resolutions of the honorable member affirm these propositions, viz. :

"1. That the political system under which we live, and under which Congress is now assembled, is a Compact, to which the people of the several States, as separate and Sovereign communities, are the parties.

"2. That these Sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for itself, of any alleged violation of the Constitution by Congress; and in case of such violation, to choose, each for itself, its own mode and measure of redress.

"It is true, sir, that the honorable member calls this a 'Constitutional' Compact; but still he affirms it to be a Compact between Sovereign States. What precise meaning, then, does he attach to the term Constitutional? When applied to Compacts between Sovereign States, the term Constitutional affixes to the word Compact no definite idea. Were we to hear of a Constitutional league

or treaty between England and France, or a Constitutional Convention between Austria and Russia, we should not understand what could be intended by such a league, such a treaty, or such a Convention. In these connections, the word is void of all meaning; and yet, sir, it is easy, quite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman has used it in these Resolutions. He cannot open the book, and look upon our written frame of Government, without seeing that it is called a Constitution. This may well be appalling to him. It threatens his whole doctrine of Compact, and its darling derivatives, Nullification and Secession, with instant confutation. Because, if he admits our instrument of Government to be a Constitution, then, for that very reason, it is not a Compact between Sovereigns; a Constitution of Government and a Compact between Sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very natures, and incapable of ever being the same. Yet the word Constitution is on the very front of the instrument. He cannot overlook it. He seeks, therefore, to compromise the matter, and to sink all the substantial sense of the word, while he retains a resemblance of the sound. He introduces a new word of his own, viz., Compact, as importing the principal idea, and designed to play the principal part, and degrades Constitution into an insignificant, idle epithet, attached to Compact. The whole then stands as a Constitutional Compact!" And in this way he hopes to pass off a plausible gloss, as satisfying the words of the instrument. But he will find himself disappointed. Sir, I must say to the honorable gentleman, that, in our American political grammar, CONSTITUTION is a noun substantive; it imports a distinct and clear idea of itself; and it is not to lose its importance and dignity, it is not to be turned into a poor, ambiguous, senseless, unmeaning adjective, for the pur

pose of accommodating any new set of political notions. Sir, we reject his new rules of syntax altogether. We will not give up our forms of political speech to the grammarians of the school of Nullification. By the Constitution, we mean, not a 'Constitutional Compact,' but, simply and directly, the Constitution, the fundamental law; and if there be one word in the language which the people of the United States understand, this is that word.* We know no more of a Constitutional Compact between Sovereign powers, than we know of a Constitutional indenture of copartnership, a Constitutional deed of conveyance or a Constitutional bill of exchange. But we know what the Constitution is; we know what the plainly written, fundamental law is; we know what the bond of our Union and the security of our liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain sense and unsophisticated meaning.

"The sense of the gentleman's proposition, therefore, is not at all affected, one way or the other, by the use of this word. That proposition still is, that our system of Government is but a Compact between the people of separate and Sovereign States.

"Was it Mirabeau, Mr. President, or some other master of the human passions, who has told us that words are things? They are indeed, things, and things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and highwrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase, or one word, for another. this, we have, I think, another example in the Resolutions before us.

Of

* Ante, p. 51, et seq.

"The first Resolution declares that the people of the several States 'acceded' to the Constitution, or to the Constitutional Compact, as it is called. This word 'accede,' not found either in the Constitution itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of the States, has been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered purpose.

"The natural converse of accession is secession; and, therefore, when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the Union, it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. If, in adopting the Constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a Compact, nothing would seem necessary, to break it up, but to secede from the same Compact. But the term is wholly out of place.* Accession, as a word applied to political associations, implies coming into a league, treaty, or confederacy, by one hitherto a stranger to it; and secession implies departing from such league or confederacy. The people of the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing the present Government. They do not say that they accede to a league, but they declare that they ordain and establish a Constitution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in all the States, without an exception, the language used by their Conventions was, that they ratified the Constitution;' some of them employing the additional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of them ratifying.'

"There is more importance than may, at first sight, appear, in the introduction of this new word by the honorable mover of these resolutions. Its adoption and use are indispensable to maintain those premises from which his main conclusion is to be afterwards drawn.

* Ante, p. 155, et seq.