he
shall now be off without consent or without making any return? The
nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called
seceding States in common with the rest. Is it just either that creditors
shall go unpaid or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the
present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it
just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself?

Again, if one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have
seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just for creditors?
Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money?
If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go in peace,
it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go or to extort
terms upon which they will promise to remain.

The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They
have assumed to make a national constitution of their own, in which of
necessity they have either discarded or retained the right of secession
as they insist it exists in ours. If they have discarded it, they thereby
admit that on principle it ought not to be in ours. If they have retained
it, by their own construction of ours, they show that to be consistent
they must secede from one another whenever they shall find it the easiest
way of settling their debts, or effecting any other selfish or unjust
object. The principle itself is one of disintegration and upon which no
government can possibly endure.

If all the States save one should assert the power to drive that one out
of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would
at once deny the power and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon
State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being
called "driving the one out," should be called "the seceding of the others
from that one," it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do, unless,
indeed, they make the point that the one, because it is a minority,
may rightfully do what the others, because they are a majority, may not
rightfully do. These politicians are subtle and profound on the rights of
minorities. They are not partial to that power which made the Constitution
and speaks from the preamble calling itself "We, the People."

It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the
legally qualified voters of any State except perhaps South Carolina in
favor of d