up on
this floor to maintain. In one of them I find it resolved, that "the
tariff of 1828, and every other tariff designed to promote one branch of
industry at the expense of others, is contrary to the meaning and
intention of the federal compact, and such a dangerous, palpable, and
deliberate usurpation of power, by a determined majority, wielding the
General Government beyond the limits of its delegated powers, as calls
upon the States which compose the suffering minority, in their sovereign
capacity, to exercise the powers which, as sovereigns, necessarily
devolve upon them when their contract is violated."

Observe, sir, that this resolution holds the tariff of 1828, and every
other tariff designed to promote one branch of industry at the expense
of another, to be such a dangerous, palpable, and deliberate usurpation
of power, as calls upon the States, in their sovereign capacity, to
interfere by their own authority. This denunciation, Mr. President, you
will please to observe, includes our old tariff of 1816, as well as all
others; because that was established to promote the interest of the
manufacturers of cotton, to the manifest and admitted injury of the
Calcutta cotton trade. Observe, again, that all the qualifications are
here rehearsed and charged upon the tariff, which are necessary to bring
the case within the gentleman's proposition. The tariff is a usurpation;
it is a dangerous usurpation; it is a palpable usurpation; it is a
deliberate usurpation. It is such a usurpation, therefore, as calls upon
the States to exercise their right of interference. Here is a case,
then, within the gentleman's principles, and all his qualifications of
his principles. It is a case for action. The Constitution is plainly,
dangerously, palpably, and deliberately violated; and the States must
interpose their own authority to arrest the law. Let us suppose the
State of South Carolina to express the same opinion, by the voice of her
Legislature. That would be very imposing; but what then? It so happens
that, at the very moment, when South Carolina resolves that the tariff
laws are unconstitutional, Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve exactly the
reverse. They hold those laws to be both highly proper and strictly
constitutional. And now, sir, how does the honorable member propose to
deal with this case? How does he relieve us from this difficulty upon
any principle of his? His construction gets us into it; how does he
propose to ge