reserved, but
how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be
broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have high, exciting,
gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children.
Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day
at least that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never
may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold
for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union, on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or
drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and
lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now
known and honored through-out the earth, still full high advanced, its
arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe
erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto,
no such miserable interrogotary as "What is all this worth?" nor those
other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward";
but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing
on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land,
and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to
every true American heart,--Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable!

JOHN C. CALHOUN

--OF SOUTH CAROLINA. (BORN 1782, DIED 1850.)

ON NULLIFICATION AND THE FORCE BILL,

IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, FEB. 15, 1833.

MR. PRESIDENT:

At the last session of Congress, it was avowed on all sides that the
public debt, as to all practical purposes, was in fact paid, the small
surplus remaining being nearly covered by the money in the Treasury and
the bonds for duties which had already accrued; but with the arrival of
this event our last hope was doomed to be disappointed. After a long
session of many months, and the most earnest effort on the part of South
Carolina and the other Southern States to obtain relief, all that could
be effected was a small reduction in the amount of the duties, but a
reduction of such a character that, while it diminished the amount of
burden, it distributed that burden more unequally than even the
obnoxious act of 1828; reversing the principle adopted by the bill of
1816, of laying higher duties on the unprotected than the protected
articles