is passage:

"All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all
_combinations_ and _associations_ under whatever plausible
character, with the _real design to direct, control,
counteract_, or _awe_ the regular deliberation and action of
the _constituted authorities_, are destructive to this
fundamental rule, and of fatal tendency."

Let me read it again. "All obstructions," &c. "All combinations," &c.

This address is replete with words of true wisdom. Let us heed them;
for they are eminently adapted to the present occasion. There is no
exigency which should be allowed to overawe Congress in the
performance of its constitutional duties. No State intervention, no
combination or association of representatives of States in a manner
unknown to the Constitution, can be recognized as authoritative by
those to whom, on their own responsibility, the people of the United
States have conferred their national interests and the guardianship of
their fundamental law. "We owe," in the language of the illustrious
statesman of Kentucky, "_a paramount_ allegiance to the Government of
the United States--a subordinate one to our State."

Sir, while I am willing to perform all my constitutional duties--all
my fraternal duties toward the people of every section of our common
country, I, for one, feel bound to abstain from any encroachment on
the duties which the Constitution of my country has delegated to
others to be performed, in the modes, and with the responsibilities,
which the _people_ for their own security have deemed it proper to
prescribe.

With these opinions, I should be unfaithful to my own convictions of
duty, and recreant to the trust which has devolved on me as a citizen
of the United States, and by inheritance from an ancestor who took a
part in the deliberations of the Convention which framed our
Constitution, and to whose public services, you, sir, so kindly
alluded at the opening of the Conference, were I to unite with the
majority of the committee in urging upon Congress the amendments they
have proposed.

Entertaining as I do for the members of the committee who have
concurred in that report a profound respect, it has been with a
feeling of unaffected diffidence and self-distrust that I have
ventured to express my sentiments on this occasion. But as I must act
on my own convictions of duty, which are in harmony with those of my
associates from Connecticut, so far as in the brief p