t us out?

In Carolina the tariff is a palpable, deliberate usurpation; Carolina,
therefore, may nullify it, and refuse to pay the duties. In Pennsylvania
it is both clearly constitutional and highly expedient; and there the
duties are to be paid. And yet we live under a government of uniform
laws, and under a constitution, too, which contains an express
provision, as it happens, that all duties shall be equal in all States.
Does not this approach absurdity?

If there be no power to settle such questions, independent of either of
the States, is not the whole Union a rope of sand? Are we not thrown
back again precisely upon the old Confederation?

It is too plain to be argued. Four-and-twenty interpreters of
constitutional law, each with a power to decide for itself, and none
with authority to bind any body else, and this constitutional law the
only bond of their union! What is such a state of things but a mere
connection during pleasure, or to use the phraseology of the times,
during feeling? And that feeling, too, not the feeling of the people,
who established the Constitution, but the feeling of the State
governments.

In another of the South Carolina addresses, having premised that the
crisis requires "all the concentrated energy of passion," an attitude of
open resistance to the laws of the Union is advised. Open resistance to
the laws, then, is the constitutional remedy, the conservative power of
the State, which the South Carolina doctrines teach for the redress of
political evils, real or imaginary. And its authors further say, that,
appealing with confidence to the Constitution itself, to justify their
opinions, they cannot consent to try their accuracy by the courts of
justice. In one sense, indeed, sir, this is assuming an attitude of open
resistance in favor of liberty. But what sort of liberty? The liberty of
establishing their own opinions, in defiance of the opinions of all
others; the liberty of judging and deciding exclusively themselves, in a
matter in which others have as much right to judge and decide as they;
the liberty of placing their own opinion above the judgment of all
others, above the laws, and above the Constitution. This is their
liberty, and this is the fair result of the proposition contended for by
the honorable gentleman. Or, it may be more properly said, it is
identical with it, rather than a result from it. * * *

Sir, the human mind is so constituted, that the merits of both sid