ry notwithstanding." And
it may be asserted, without fear of refutation, that no federative
government could exist without a similar provision. Look, for a moment,
to the consequence. If South Carolina considers the revenue laws
unconstitutional, and has a right to prevent their execution in the port
of Charleston, there would be a clear constitutional objection to their
collection in every other port, and no revenue could be collected
anywhere; for all imposts must be equal. It is no answer to repeat that
an unconstitutional law is no law, so long as the question of its
legality is to be decided by the State itself; for every law operating
injuriously upon any local interest will be perhaps thought, and
certainly represented, as unconstitutional, and, as has been shown,
there is no appeal.

If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would
have been dissolved in its infancy. The excise law in Pennsylvania, the
embargo and non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the carriage tax
in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in
their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but,
fortunately, none of those States discovered that they had the right now
claimed by South Carolina. The war into which we were forced, to support
the dignity of the nation and the rights of our citizens, might have
ended in defeat and disgrace, instead of victory and honor, if the
States, who supposed it a ruinous and unconstitutional measure, had
thought they possessed the right of nullifying the act by which it was
declared, and denying supplies for its prosecution. Hardly and unequally
as those measures bore upon several members of the Union, to the
legislatures of none did this efficient and peaceable remedy, as it is
called, suggest itself. The discovery of this important feature in our
Constitution was reserved to the present day. To the statesmen of South
Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that State
will, unfortunately, fall the evils of reducing it to practice.

If the doctrine of a State veto upon the laws of the Union carries with
it internal evidence of its impracticable absurdity, our constitutional
history will also afford abundant proof that it would have been
repudiated with indignation had it been proposed to form a feature in
our government.

In our colonial state, although dependent on another power, we very
early considered ourselves as connecte