by reprisals on the offending members of the league; and reprisals, if the circumstances of the case require it, may be followed by direct, avowed, and public war.

The necessary import of the resolutions, therefore, is that the United States are connected only by a league; that it is in the good pleasure of every state to decide how long she will choose to remain a member of this league; that any state may determine the extent of her own obligations under it, and accept or reject what shall be decided by the whole; that she may also determine whether her rights have been violated, what is the extent of the injury done her, and what mode and measure of redress her wrongs may make it fit and expedient for her to adopt. The result of the whole is, that any state may secede at pleasure; that any state may resist a law which she herself may choose to say exceeds the power of congress, and that, as a sovereign power, she may redress her own grievances by her own arm, at her discretion; she may make reprisals; she may cruise against the property of other members of the league; she may authorize captures, and make open war.

If, sir, this be our political condition, it is time the people of the United States understood it. Let us look for a moment to the practical consequences of these opinions. One state holding an embargo law unconstitutional, may declare her opinion, and withdraw from the Union,

She secedes. Another forming and expressing the same judgment on a law laying duties on imports, may withdraw also. She secedes. And as, in her opinion, money has been taken out of the pockets of her citizens illegally, under pretence of this law, and as she has power to redress their wrongs, she may demand satisfaction; and, if refused, she may take it with a strong hand. The gentleman has, himself, pronounced the collection of duties, under existing laws, to be nothing but robbery. Robbers, of course, may be rightfully dispossessed of the fruits of their flagitious crimes; and, therefore, reprisals, imposi tions on the commerce of other states, foreign alliances against them, or open war, are all modes of redress justly open to the discretion and choice of South Carolina; for she is to judge of her own rights, and to seek satisfaction for her own wrongs in her own way.

But, sir, a third state is of opinion, not only that these laws of impost are constitutional, but that it is the absolute duty of congress to pass and to maintain such laws; and that, by omitting to pass and maintain them, its constitutional obligations would be grossly disregarded. She relinquished the power of protection, she might allege, and allege truly, herself, and gave it up to congress, on the faith that congress would exercise it. If congress now refuse to exercise it, congress does, as she may insist, break the condition of the grant, and thus manifestly vio

and the forms of local government. If South Carolina now shall effectually resist the laws of congress, if she shall be her own judge, take her remedy into her own hands, obey the laws of the Union when she pleases, and disobey them when she pleases, she will relieve herself from a paramount power as distinctly as the American colonies did the same thing in 1776. In other words, she will achieve, as to herself, a revolution.

But, sir, while practical nullification in South Carolina would be, as to herself, actual and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency must also be to spread revolution, and break up the constitution, as to all the other states. It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of the whole Union. To allow state resistance to the laws of congress to be rightful and proper, to admit nullification in some states, and yet not expect to see a dismemberment of the entire government, appears to me the wildest illusion, and the most extravagant folly. The gentleman seems not conscious of the direction or the rapidity of his own course. The current of his opinions sweeps him along, he knows not whither. To begin with nullification, with the avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half way down. In the one case, as in the other, the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of the

dark abyss below, were it not that that abyss has no discovered bottom.

Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves citizens from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and elevates another authority to supreme command. Is not this revolution? And it raises to supreme command four and twenty distinct powers, each professing to be under a general government, and yet each setting its laws at defiance at pleasure. Is not this anarchy, as well as revolution? Sir, the constitution of the United States was received as a whole, and for the whole country. If it cannot stand altogether, it cannot stand in parts; and if the laws cannot be executed every where, they cannot long be executed any where. The gentleman very well knows that all duties and imposts must be uniform throughout the country. He knows that we cannot have one rule or one law for South Carolina, and another for other states. He must see, therefore, and does see, every man sees, that the only alternative is a repeal of the laws, throughout the whole Union, or their execution in South Carolina as well as elsewhere. And this repeal is demanded because a single state interposes her veto, and threatens resistance! The result of the gentleman's opinions, or rather the very text of his doctrine is, that no act of

Congress can bind all the states, the constitutionality of which is not admitted by all; or, in other words, that no single state is bound, against its own dissent, by a law of imposts. This is precisely the evil experienced under the old confederation, and for remedy of which this constitution was adopted. The leading object in establishing this government, an object forced on the country by the condition of the times, and the absolute necessity of the law, was to give to congress power to lay and collect imposts, without the consent of particular states. The revolutionary debt remained unpaid; the national treasury was bankrupt; the country was destitute of credit; congress issued its requisitions on the states, and the states neglected them; there was no power of coercion but war; congress could not lay imposts, or other taxes, by its own authority; the whole general goverment, therefore, was little more than a name. The articles of confederation, as to purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly a dead letter. The country sought to escape from this condition, at once feeble and disgraceful, by constituting a government which should have power of itself to lay duties and taxes, and to pay the public debt, and provide for the general welfare; and to lay these duties and taxes in all the states, without asking the consent of the state governments. This was the very power on which the new constitution was to depend for all its ability to do

good; and, without it, it can be no government, now or at any time. Yet, sir, it is precisely against this power, so absolutely indispensable to the very being of the government, that South Carolina directs her ordinance. She attacks the government in its authority to raise revenue, the very mainspring of the whole system; and, if she succeed, every movement of that system must inevitably cease. It is of no avail that she declares that she does not resist the law as a revenue law, but as a law for protecting manufactures. It is a revenue law; it is the very law by force of which the revenue is collected; if it be arrested in any state, the revenue ceases in that state; it is, in a word, the sole reliance of the government for the means of maintaining itself, and performing its duties.

Mr. president, the alleged right of a state to decide constitutional questions for herself, necessarily leads to force, because other states must have the same right, and because different states will decide differently; and, when these questions arise between states, if there be no superior power, they can be decided only by the law of force. On entering into the Union, the people of each state gave up a part of their own power to make laws for themselves, in consideration that, as to common objects, they should have a part in making laws for other states. In other words, the people of all the states agreed to create a common government, to be con