es of
a controversy appear very clear, and very palpable, to those who
respectively espouse them; and both sides usually grow clearer as the
controversy advances. South Carolina sees unconstitutionality in the
tariff; she sees oppression there also, and she sees danger.
Pennsylvania, with a vision not less sharp, looks at the same tariff,
and sees no such thing in it; she sees it all constitutional, all
useful, all safe. The faith of South Carolina is strengthened by
opposition, and she now not only sees, but resolves, that the tariff is
palpably unconstitutional, oppressive, and dangerous; but Pennsylvania,
not to be behind her neighbors, and equally willing to strengthen her
own faith by a confident asseveration resolves, also, and gives to every
warm affirmative of South Carolina, a plain, downright, Pennsylvania
negative. South Carolina, to show the strength and unity of her opinion,
brings her assembly to a unanimity, within seven voices; Pennsylvania,
not to be outdone in this respect any more than in others, reduces her
dissentient fraction to a single vote. Now, sir, again, I ask the
gentleman, What is to be done? Are these States both right? Is he bound
to consider them both right? If not, which is in the wrong? or, rather,
which has the best right to decide? And if he, and if I, are not to know
what the Constitution means, and what it is, till those two State
legislatures, and the twenty-two others, shall agree in its
construction, what have we sworn to, when we have sworn to maintain it?
I was forcibly struck, sir, with one reflection, as the gentleman went
on in his speech. He quoted Mr. Madison's resolutions, to prove that a
State may interfere, in a case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous
exercise of a power not granted. The honorable member supposes the
tariff law to be such an exercise of power; and that consequently a case
has arisen in which the State may, if it see fit, interfere by its own
law. Now it so happens, nevertheless, that Mr. Madison deems this same
tariff law quite constitutional. Instead of a clear and palpable
violation, it is, in his judgment, no violation at all. So that, while
they use his authority in a hypothetical case, they reject it in the
very case before them. All this, sir, shows the inherent futility, I had
almost used a stronger word, of conceding this power of interference to
the State, and then attempting to secure it from abuse by imposing
qualifications of which the S