where his measures were opposed, his services slighted, and his chaacter vilified. We know, or we might know, if we turned to the journals, who expressed respect, gratitude, and regret, when he retired from the chief magistracy; and who refused to express either respect, gratitude, or regret-I shall not open those journals. Publications more abusive or scurrilous never saw the light, than were sent forth against Washington, and all his leading measures, from presses south of New England. But I shall not look them up. I employ no scavengers no one is in attendance on me, tendering such means of retaliation; and if there were, with an ass' load of them, with bulk as huge as that which the gentleman himself has produced, I would not touch one of them. I see enough of the violence of our own times, to be no way anxious to rescue from forgetfulness the extravagances of times past. Besides, what is all this to the present purpose? It has nothing to do with the public lands, in regard to which the attack was begun; and it has nothing to do with those sentiments and opinions which I have thought tend to disunion, and all of which the honorable member seems to have adopted himself, and undertaken to defend. New England has, at times, so argues the gentleman, held opinions as dangerous as those which he now holds. Be it so. But why, therefore, does he abuse New England? If he finds himself countenanced by acts of hers, how is it that, while he relies on these acts, he covers,

or seeks to cover, their authors with reproach?

But if, in the course of forty years, there have been undue effervescences of party in New England, has the same thing happened nowhere else? Party animosity, and party outrage, not in New England, but elsewhere, denounced President Washington, not only as a federalist, but as a tory,a British agent, a man who, in his high office, sanctioned corruption. But does the honorable member suppose, that if I had a tender here, who should put such an effusion of wickedness and folly in my hand, that I would stand up and read it against the South? Parties ran into great heats, again, in 1799, and 1800.

What was said, or rather what was not said, in those years, against John Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and its admitted ablest defender on the floor of Congress? If the gentleman wishes to increase his stores of party abuse and frothy violence; if he has. a determined proclivity to such pursuits, there are treasures of that sort south of the Potomac, much to his taste, yet untouched. -[ shall not touch them.

The parties which divided the country, at the commencement of the late war, were violent. But then there was violence on both sides, and violence in every State. Minorities and majorities were equally violent. There was no more violence against the war in New England than in other States; nor any more appearance of violence, except that, owing to a dense population, greater facility

of assembling, and more presses, there may have been more in quantity spoken and printed there than in some other places.

It is enough for me to say, that if, in any part of this, their grateful occupation, if, in all their researches, they find anything in the history of Massachusetts, or New England, or in the proceedings of any legislative, or other public body, disloyal to the Union, speaking slightly of its value, proposing to break it up, or recommending non-intercourse with neighboring States, on account of difference of political opinion, then, sir, I give them all up to the honorable gentleman's unrestrained rebuke; expecting, however, that he will extend his buffetings, in like maner, to all similar proceedings, wherever else found.

Mr President, in carrying his warfare, such as it was into New England, the honorable gentleman all along professes to be acting on the defensive. He desires to consider me as having assailed South Carolina, and insists that he comes forth only as her champion, and in her defence.

I do not admit that I made any attack whatever on South Carolina. Nothing like it. The honorable member, in his first speech, expressed opinions, in regard to revenue, and some other topics, which I heard both with pain and with surprise. I told the gentle man that I was aware that such sentiments were entertained out of the Government, but had not expected to find them advanced in it; that I knew there were persons in the South, who speak of our Union with indifference,

or doubt, taking pains to magnify its evils, and to say nothing of its benefits; that the honorable member himself, I was sure, could never be one of these; and I regretted the expression of such opinions as he had avowed, because I thought their obvious tendency was to encourage feelings of disrespect to the Union, and to weaken its connexion. I said nothing of the recent conventions. 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 his precedents.

This two-fold purpose, not very consistent with itself, one would think was exhibited more than once in the course of his speech. He referred, for instance, to the Hartford Convention. Did he do this for authority, or for a topic of reproach? Apparently for both; for he told us that he should find no fault with the mere fact of

holding such a convention, and considering and discussing such questions as he supposes were then and there discussed; but what rendered it obnoxious, was, the time it was holden, and the circumstances of the country, then existing. We were in a war, he said, and the country needed all our aid; the hand of Government required to be strengthened, not weakened; and patriotism should have postponed such proceedings to another day. The thing itself, then, is a precedent; the time and manner of it, only, subject of censure. I go much farther, on this point, than the honorable member. Supposing, as the gentleman seems to, that the Hartfort Convention assembled for any such purpose as breaking up the Union, because they thought unconstitutional laws had been passed, or to concert on that subject, or to calculate the value of the Union; supposing this to be their purpose, or any part of it, then I say the meettng itself was disloyal, and was obnoxious to censure, whether held in time of peace or time of war, or under whatever circumstances. The material matter is the object. Is dissolution the object? If it be, external circumstances may make it a more or less aggravated case, but cannot affect the principle. I do not hold, therefore, sir, that the Hartford Convention was pardonable, even to the extent of the gentleman's admission, of its objects were really such as have been imputed to it. There never was a time, under any degree of excitement, in which the Hartford Convention, or any other

convention, could maintain itself one moment in New England, if assembled for any such purpose as the gentleman say would have been an allowable purpose: To hold conventions to decide questions of constitutional law!-to try the binding validity of statutes, by votes in a convention! Sir, the Hartford Convention, I presume, would not desire that the honorable gentleman should be their defender or advocate, if he puts their case upon such untenable and extravagant grounds.

Then, sir, the gentleman has no fault to find with these recently promulgated South Carolina opinions.

And, certainly, he need have none; for his own sentiments, as now advanced, and advanced on reflection, as far as I have been able to comprehend them, go the full length of all these opinions. I propose, sir, to say something on these, and to consider how far they are just and constitutional. Before doing that, however, let me observe, that the eulogium pronounced on the character of the state of South Carolina by the honorable gentleman, 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 Laurens, Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions-Americans all-whose

if uneasiness, under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather around it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.

There yet remains to be performed, Mr President, by far the most grave and important duty, which I feel to be devolved on me by this occasion. It is to state, and to defend what I conceive to be the true principles of the Constitution under which we are here assembled. I might well have desired that so weighty a task should have fallen into other and abler hands. But I have met the occasion, not sought it; and I shall proceed to state my own sentiments, without challenging for them any particular regard, with studied plainness, and as much precision as possible.

I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of the State Legislatures to interfere, - whenever, in their judgment, this Government transcends its Constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws.

I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing under the Constitution; not as a right to overthrow it, on the ground of extreme necessity, such as would justify violent revolution.

I understand him to maintain

an authority on the part of the States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exercise of power by the General Government, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its power.

:

I understand him to maintain, that the ultimate power of judging of the Constitutional extent of its own authority, is not lodged exclusively in the General Government, or any branch of it but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the General Government transcends its power.

I understand him to insist, that if the exigency of the case, in theopinion of any State Government require it, such State Government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the General Government, which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitutional.

This is the sum of what I understand from him to be the South Carolina doctrine. I propose to consider it, and to compare it with the Constitution. Allow me to say, as a preliminary remark, that I call this the South Carolina doctrine, only because the gentleman himself has so denominated it. I do not feel at liberty to say that South Carolina, as a State has ever advanced these sentiments. I hope she has not, and never may. That a great majority, of her people are opposed to the tariff laws is doubtless true. That a majority, somewhat less than that just mentioned, conscientiously believe these laws un