stitutional exercise of power, highly injurious and
oppressive to her and the other staple states, and has accordingly,
met it with the most determined resistance. I do not intend to enter,
at this time, into the argument as to the unconstitutionality of the
protective system. It is not necessary. It is sufficient that the
power is nowhere granted; and that, from the journals of the
Convention which formed the Constitution, it would seem that it was
refused. In support of the journals, I might cite the statement of
Luther Martin, which has already been referred to, to show that the
Convention, so far from conferring the power on the Federal
Government, left to the state the right to impose duties on imports,
with the express view of enabling the several states to protect their
own manufactures. Notwithstanding this, Congress has assumed, without
any warrant from the Constitution, the right of exercising this most
important power, and has so exercised it as to impose a ruinous burden
on the labor and capital of the state of South Carolina, by which her
resources are exhausted, the enjoyments of her citizens curtailed, the
means of education contracted, and all her interests essentially and
injuriously affected.

We have been sneeringly told that she is a small state; that her
population does not exceed half a million of souls; and that more than
one half are not of the European race. The facts are so. I know she
never can be a great state, and that the only distinction to which she
can aspire must be based on the moral and intellectual acquirements of
her sons. To the development of these much of her attention has been
directed; but this restrictive system, which has so unjustly exacted
the proceeds of her labor, to be bestowed on other sections, has so
impaired the resources of the state, that, if not speedily arrested,
it will dry up the means of education, and with it deprive her of the
only source through which she can aspire to distinction. . . . .

The people of the state believe that the Union is a union of states,
and not of individuals; that it was formed by the states, and that the
citizens of the several states were bound to it through the acts of
their several states; that each state ratified the Constitution for
itself; and that it was only by such ratification of a state that any
obligation was imposed upon the citizens; thus believing, it is the
opinion of the people of Carolina, that it belongs to the st