cash duties in another. As great as these objections are, they become insignificant in a bill, which by a single blow, by treating the states as a mere lawless mass of individuals, prostrates all the barriers of the constitution. This bill proceeds upon the supposition that the entire sovereignty of this country belongs to the American people, as forming one great community, and regards the states as mere fractions or counties, and not as integral parts of the union, having no more right to resist the encroachments of the government, than a county has to resist the authority of a state. It has been said that this bill declares war against South Carolina. No, it decrees a massacre of her citizens. War has something ennobling about it, and, with all its horrors, brings into action some of the highest qualities, intellectual and moral. It was, perhaps, in the order of Providence, that it should have been permitted for that very purpose. But this bill declares no war, except indeed it be that which savages wage, a war, not against the community, but the citizens of which that community is composed. But I regard it as worse than savage warfare,-as an attempt to take away life under the color of law, without the trial by jury, or any other safeguard, which the constitution has thrown around the life of the citizen. It authorizes the president, or even his deputies, when they suppose the law to

be violated, without the intervention of a court or jury, to kill without mercy or discrimination.

"It has been said, by the senator from Tennessee, to be a measure of peace. Yes, such a peace as the wolf gives to the lamb, the kite to the dove! Such a peace as Russia gives to Poland, or death to its victim! A peace, by extinguishing the political existence of a state, by awing her into the abandonment of every power which constitutes her a sovereign community. It is to South Carolina a question of self-preservation, and I proclaim it, that should this bill pass, and an attempt be made to enforce it, it will be resisted at all hazards-even of death itself. Death is not the greatest calamity; there are others still more terrible to the free and the brave; among them may be placed the loss of liberty and honor. There are thousands of her brave sons, who, if need be, are prepared cheerfully to lay down their lives in defence of the state, and the great principle of constitutional liberty for which she is contending. God forbid that this should become necessary! It never can be, unless this government is resolved to bring the question to extremity, when her gallant sons will stand prepared to perform the last duty to die nobly."

Such was the attitude assumed by South

Carolina at home, and in the supreme council of the nation. The union seemed on the very brink of dissolution. One strong mind, by the power of a perverted eloquence, seemed to grasp the very pillars of the state, and appeared resolved by one fatal effort to pluck down the whole structure into a mass of ruins.

Fortunately for the union, there was, at that time, in the senate, a man precisely calculated to meet the crisis, a man with an intellect so profound, as at once to penetrate and scatter to the winds the most complicated web of sophistry that the most artful could weave, and a patriotism so deep, that its tones could not but vibrate from one end of the country to the other. That man was Daniel Webster. That man I need not describe. Most of you have seen him. He is yet alive, in the full maturity of his powers, and I believe I have the best authority for saying that he is the greatest living intellect. He is an American citizen, but he is not ours alone, he belongs to the world. All eyes were turned on him in the last resort as the ablest champion of the constitution. He met the great question of nullification on the very threshold, and gave it a Waterloo defeat. For six years he maintained the struggle, and succeeded at last in settling the constitution on an immovable basis. As a specimen of his style, I shall give you the peroration of

his most famous speech on this memorable occasion.

"I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union that we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds which unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor of the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union is to be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the union lasts we have high,

exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for ourselves and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies beyond.

"When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union, on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last, feeble, lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured,-bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and union afterwards, but every where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heaven, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and union, now and for ever one, and inseparable."

The effect of this speech, fortified as it was