the execution of
the new law. Legislators in the State capital, orators on the platform,
editors through their columns, urged nullification. There were two
reasons for this growing hostility to protection on the part of the
citizens of Calhoun's State; first the belief that as England was the
largest purchaser of cotton, it was to South Carolina's best interest to
have English goods brought in free; second the conviction that the
tariff was a strictly sectional movement in the interest of the
manufacturing North, as opposed to the South with her raw cotton and
slave labour.

As a candidate for the vice-presidency in 1828 on the same ticket as
General Jackson, Calhoun took no definite step until after the election,
when he published a paper showing the evil which the protective tariff
was doing the Southern states, and asserting the right to interpose a
veto. In January, 1830, having broken with Jackson and abandoned all
hope of later obtaining the presidency by his aid, Calhoun decided to
test the theory of nullification upon the national theatre. Accordingly,
under his direction, Senator Hayne inserted in his speech on the Foote
Resolution on the public lands the defense of what was to be known later
as the South Carolina Doctrine,--that, if a State considered a law of
Congress unconstitutional (as South Carolina asserted the recent tariff
act to be) the State had the right to nullify the law, and, if
obedience was sought to be enforced, the right to secede from the Union.

His position has been stated by no one so clearly as by himself, for he
spent the next three years perfecting and elaborating his argument. As
the basis of his structure he employed a distinction between "a nation"
and "a union." England was a nation--the United States was a union.
Russia, Austria and Turkey were nations--this republic a union of
sovereign states. Prussia was presided over by a king and was a
nation--the United States was a republic and the citizens ruled
themselves. Calhoun distinguished also between sovereignty and
government; sovereignty is a birthright, a natural and inalienable right
vouchsafed by God; government is an artificial right established by law.
Sovereignty is an inexpungable and inherent privilege; government is a
secondary and artificial privilege. When any sovereign State is injured,
it has not only the right but the duty to withdraw from the compact that
has been broken. The popular notion is that this idea of _