estore the
government to its original simplicity and purity. State interposition,
or to express it more fully, the right of a State to interpose her
sovereign voice, as one of the parties to our constitutional compact,
against the encroachments of this government, is the only means of
sufficient potency to effect all this; and I am therefore its advocate.
I rejoiced to hear the Senators from North Carolina [Mr. Brown], and
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Buchanan], do us the justice to distinguish
between nullification and the anarchical and revolutionary movements in
Maryland and Pennsylvania. I know they did not intend it as a
compliment; but I regard it as the highest. They are right. Day and
night are not more different--more unlike in everything. They are unlike
in their principles, their objects, and their consequences.

I shall not stop to make good this assertion, as I might easily do. The
occasion does not call for it. As a conservative and a State Rights man,
or if you will have it, a nullifier, I have resisted and shall resist
all encroachments on the Constitution--whether of this Government on the
rights of the States, or the opposite:--whether of the Executive on
Congress, or Congress on the Executive. My creed is to hold both
governments, and all the departments of each, to their proper sphere,
and to maintain the authority of the laws and the Constitution against
all revolutionary movements. I believe the means which our system
furnishes to preserve itself are ample, if fairly understood and
applied; and I shall resort to them, however corrupt and disordered the
times, so long as there is hope of reforming the government. The result
is in the hands of the Disposer of events. It is my part to do my duty.
Yet while I thus openly avow myself a conservative, God forbid I should
ever deny the glorious right of rebellion and revolution. Should
corruption and oppression become intolerable, and not otherwise be
thrown off--if liberty must perish or the government be overthrown, I
would not hesitate, at the hazard of life, to resort to revolution, and
to tear down a corrupt government that could neither be reformed nor
borne by freemen. But I trust in God things will never come to that
pass. I trust never to see such fearful times; for fearful indeed they
would be, if they should ever befall us. It is the last remedy, and not
to be thought of till common-sense and the voice of mankind would
justify the resort.

Before I