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The Senator from Massachusetts, in denouncing what he is pleased to call the Carolina doctrine, has attempted to throw ridicule upon the idea that a State has any constitutional remedy, by the exercise of its sovereign authority, against "a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the Constitution." He called it "an idle" or "a ridiculous notion," or something to that effect, and added it would make the Union "a mere rope of sand." Now, sir, as the gentleman has not condescended to enter into any examination of the question, and has been satisfied with throwing the weight of his authority into the scale, I do not deem it necessary to do more than to throw into the opposite scale the authority on which South Carolina relies, and there, for the present, I am perfectly willing to leave the controversy. The South Carolina doctrine, that is to say, the doctrine contained in an exposition reported by a committee of the legislature in December, 1828, and published by their authority, is the good old Republican doctrine of '98; the doctrine of the celebrated "Virginia Resolutions" of that year, and of "Madison's Report" of '99, which deserves to last as long as the Constitution itself.1

But, sir, our authorities do not stop here. The State of Kentucky responded to Virginia, and on the 10th of November, 1798, adopted those celebrated resolutions, well known to have been penned by the author of the Declaration of American Independence. In those resolutions the legislature of Kentucky declare "that the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress."

Time and experience confirmed Mr. Jefferson's opinion on this all-important point. In the year 1821 he expressed himself in this emphatic manner: "It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are superior to the Federal or the Federal to the State; neither is authorized literally to decide which belongs to itself or its co-partner in government; in differences of opinion between their different sets of public servants, the appeal is to neither, but to their employers, peaceably assembled by their representatives in convention." The opinions of Mr. Jefferson on this subject have been so repeatedly 'See Volume VII, chapter IV.

and so solemnly expressed that they may be said to have been the most fixed and settled convictions of his mind.

In the protest prepared by him for the legislature of Virginia, in December, 1825, in respect to the powers exercised by the Federal Government in relation to the tariff and internal improvements, which he declares to be "usurpations of the powers retained by the States, mere interpolations into the compact, and direct infractions of it," he solemnly reasserts all the principles of the Virginia resolutions of '98, protests against "these acts of the Federal branch of the Government as null and void, and declares that, although Virginia would consider a dissolution of the Union as among the greatest calamities that could befall them, yet it is not the greatest. There is one yet greater: submission to a Government of unlimited powers. It is only when the hope of this shall become absolutely desperate that further forbearance could not be indulged."

Such, sir, are the high and imposing authorities in support of the "Carolina doctrine," which is, in fact, the doctrine of the Virginia resolutions of 1798.

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Sir, at that day the whole country was divided on this very question. It formed the line of demarcation between the Federal and Republican parties, and the great political revolution which then took place turned upon the very question involved in these resolutions. That question was decided by the people, and by that decision the Constitution was, in the emphatic language of Mr. Jefferson, "saved at its last gasp. Resting on authority like this, I will ask gentlemen whether South Carolina has not manifested a high regard for the Union when, under a tyranny ten times more grievous than the alien and sedition laws, she has hitherto gone no further than to petition, remonstrate, and solemnly to protest against a series of measures which she believes to be wholly unconstitutional and utterly destructive of her interests? Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step further than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to go, in relation to the very subject of our present complaints; not a step further than the statesmen from New England were disposed to go under similar circumstances; no further than the Senator from Massachusetts himself once considered as within "the limits of a constitutional opposition." The doctrine that it is the right of a State to judge of the violations of the Constitution on the part of the Federal Government, and to protect her citizens from the operation of unconstitutional laws, was held by the enlightened citizens of Boston who assembled in Faneuil Hall on the 25th January, 1809. They

state, in that celebrated memorial, that "they looked only to the State legislature, who were competent to devise relief against the unconstitutional acts of the general Government. That your power [say they] is adequate to that object is evident from the organization of the confederacy."

A distinguished Senator from one of the New England States [Mr. Hillhouse], in a speech delivered here on a bill for enforcing the embargo, declared: "I feel myself bound in conscience to declare, lest the blood of those who shall fall in the execution of this measure shall be on my head, that I consider this to be an act which directs a mortal blow at the liberties of my country; an act containing unconstitutional provisions, to which the people are not bound to submit, and to which, in my opinion, they will not submit."

And the Senator from Massachusetts himself, in a speech delivered on the same subject in the other House, said: "This opposition is constitutional and legal; it is also conscientious. It rests on settled and sober conviction that such policy is destructive to the interests of the people and dangerous to the being of the Government. The experience of every day confirms these sentiments. Men who act from such motives are not to be discouraged by trifling obstacles nor awed by any dangers. They know the limit of constitutional opposition; up to that limit, at their own discretion, they will walk, and walk fearlessly." How "the being of the Government" was to be endangered by "constitutional opposition to the embargo" I leave to the gentleman to explain.

Thus it will be seen, said Mr. H., that the South Carolina doctrine is the Republican doctrine of '98; that it was first promulgated by the fathers of the faith; that it was maintained by Virginia and Kentucky in the worst of times; that it constituted the very pivot on which the political revolution of that day turned; that it embraces the very principles the triumph of which at that time saved the Constitution at its last gasp, and which New England statesmen were not unwilling to adopt when they believed themselves to be the victims of unconstitutional legislation. Sir, as to the doctrine that the Federal Government is the exclusive judge of the extent, as well as the limitations, of its powers, it seems to me to be utterly subversive of the sovereignty and independence of the States. It makes but little difference, in my estimation, whether Congress or the Supreme Court are invested with this power. If the Federal Government, in all or any of its departments, is to prescribe the limits of its own authority, and the States are

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bound to submit to the decision, and are not to be allowed to examine and decide for themselves, when the barriers of the Constitution shall be overleaped, this is practically "a Government without limitation of powers. The States are at once reduced to mere petty corporations and the people are entirely at your mercy. I have but one word more to add. In all the efforts that have been made by South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has extended over them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of the Union by the only means by which she believes it can be long preserveda firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. The measures of the Federal Government, have, it is true, prostrated her interests and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. But even this evil, great as it is, is not the chief ground of our complaints. It is the principle involved in the contest-a principle which, substituting the discretion of Congress for the limitations of the Constitution, brings the States and the people to the feet of the Federal Government and leaves them nothing that they can call their own. Sir, if the measures of the Federal Government were less oppressive, we should still strive against this usurpation. The South is acting on a principle she has always held sacred-resistance to unauthorized taxation. These, sir, are the principles which induced the immortal Hampden to resist the payment of a tax of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined his fortune? No; but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle on which it was demanded, would have made him a slave. Sir, if, in acting on these high motives, if, animated by that ardent love of liberty which has always been the most prominent trait in the Southern character, we should be hurried beyond the bounds of a cold and calculating prudence, who is there with one noble and generous sentiment in his bosom that would not be disposed, in the language of Burke, to exclaim: "You must pardon something to the spirit of liberty!"

SENATOR WEBSTER said: In carrying his warfare, such as it was, into New England, the honorable gentleman all along professes to be acting on the defensive. He elects to consider me as having assailed South Carolina, and insists that he comes forth only as her champion and in her defence. Sir, I do not admit that I made any attack whatever on South Carolina. If he means that I spoke with dissatisfaction or disrespect of the ebullitions of individuals in South Carolina, it is true. But if he means that I had assailed the character of the State, her honor or patriotism, that I had reflected on her

history or her conduct, he had not the slightest ground for any such assumption. I spoke in the most guarded and careful manner, and only expressed my regret for the publication of opinions which I presumed the honorable member disapproved as much as myself. In this it seems I was mistaken. I do not remember that the gentleman has disclaimed any sentiment or any opinion of a supposed anti-union tendency which on all or any of the recent occasions has been expressed. The whole drift of his speech has been rather to prove that, in divers times and manners, sentiments equally liable to my objection have been promulgated in New England. And one would suppose that his object, in this reference to Massachusetts, was to find a precedent to justify proceedings in the South, were it not for the reproach and contumely with which he labors, all along, to load these, his own chosen precedents. By way of defending South Carolina from what he chooses to think an attack on her, he first quotes the example of Massachusetts, and then denounces that example in good set terms.

Before I proceed further let me observe that the eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina by the honorable gentlemen, for her revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions-Americans all-whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears-does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight, rather. Sir, I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place, here in the Senate or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it

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