ts of Congress commonly called the
tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, but they prostrate and sweep away at once
and without exception every act and every part of every act imposing any
amount whatever of duty on any foreign merchandise, and virtually every
existing act which has ever been passed authorizing the collection of
the revenue, including the act of 1816, and also the collection law of
1799, the constitutionality of which has never been questioned. It is
not only those duties which are charged to have been imposed for the
protection of manufactures that are thereby repealed, but all others,
though laid for the purpose of revenue merely, and upon articles in no
degree suspected of being objects of protection. The whole revenue
system of the United States in South Carolina is obstructed and
overthrown, and the Government is absolutely prohibited from collecting
any part of the public revenue within the limits of that State.
Henceforth, not only the citizens of South Carolina and of the United
States, but the subjects of foreign states may import any description or
quantity of merchandise into the ports of South Carolina without the
payment of any duty whatsoever. That State is thus relieved from the
payment of any part of the public burthens, and duties and imposts are
not only rendered not uniform throughout the United States, but a direct
and ruinous preference is given to the ports of that State over those of
all the other States of the Union, in manifest violation of the positive
provisions of the Constitution.

In point of duration, also, those aggressions upon the authority of
Congress which by the ordinance are made part of the fundamental law of
South Carolina are absolute, indefinite, and without limitation. They
neither prescribe the period when they shall cease nor indicate any
conditions upon which those who have thus undertaken to arrest the
operation of the laws are to retrace their steps and rescind their
measures. They offer to the United States no alternative but
unconditional submission. If the scope of the ordinance is to be
received as the scale of concession, their demands can be satisfied only
by a repeal of the whole system of revenue laws and by abstaining from
the collection of any duties and imposts whatsoever.

It is true that in the address to the people of the United States by the
convention of South Carolina, after announcing "the fixed and final
determination of the State in relation to