e power to enforce it. Such a
right, though it may be admitted to preexist and can not be wholly
surrendered, is necessarily subjected to limitations in all free
governments, and in compacts of all kinds freely and voluntarily entered
into, and in which the interest and welfare of the individual become
identified with those of the community of which he is a member. In
compacts between individuals, however deeply they may affect their
relations, these principles are acknowledged to create a sacred
obligation; and in compacts of civil government, involving the liberties
and happiness of millions of mankind, the obligation can not be less.

Without adverting to the particular theories to which the federal
compact has given rise, both as to its formation and the parties to it,
and without inquiring whether it be merely federal or social or
national, it is sufficient that it must be admitted to be a compact and
to possess the obligations incident to a compact; to be "a compact by
which power is created on the one hand and obedience exacted on the
other; a compact freely, voluntarily, and solemnly entered into by the
several States and ratified by the people thereof, respectively; a
compact by which the several States and the people thereof,
respectively, have bound themselves to each other and to the Federal
Government, and by which the Federal Government is bound to the several
States and to every citizen of the United States." To this compact, in
whatever mode it may have been done, the people of South Carolina have
freely and voluntarily given their assent, and to the whole and every
part of it they are, upon every principle of good faith, inviolably
bound. Under this obligation they are bound and should be required to
contribute their portion of the public expense, and to submit to all
laws made by the common consent, in pursuance of the Constitution, for
the common defense and general welfare, until they can be changed in the
mode which the compact has provided for the attainment of those great
ends of the Government and of the Union. Nothing less than causes which
would justify revolutionary remedy can absolve the people from this
obligation, and for nothing less can the Government permit it to be done
without violating its own obligations, by which, under the compact, it
is bound to the other States and to every citizen of the United States.

These deductions plainly flow from the nature of the federal compact,
which